DIY save the dates

So, my Save the Date cards arrived yesterday from moo.com.

The aim of the game here was to keep them low cost without looking cheap – so I went for a standard business card size card, designed the images myself, and thought I’d worry about making them look special when they got here!

The front is a picture of my wedding shoes. I’m known for my footwear, and the shoes are rapidly forming the basis of my colour scheme/diy details. (I’m thinking I might use a different picture of the shoes for the RSVP cards too…) The image came out a bit too dark for my liking, but there’s nothing I can do about that now!

We’re having a loosely autumn-themed wedding and I’m already in possession of a LOT of leaf punches.

I saw a save the date where an design had been stamped out of the envelope in the recent issue of Martha Stewart Weddings and I thought it was a nice idea.

I’ve also got lots of gorgeous paper, so I took one card, one enevelope and some ribbon and had a little play.

This is what I eventually decided on: I punched a very small leaf shaped hole in the corner of the cards, and a larger hole in the flap on the back of the envelope.

I fed a small piece of ribbon through the card. I then punched two of the larger-sized leaves out of a piece of patterned paper. One of these went where the gap in the back of the envelope falls.

Then I took the leaf that came out of the envelope, and the second patterned leaf and sandwiched the ends of the ribbon between them, so each card has a leaf attached by a length of ribbon, like this:

When I was addressing the first envelopes this morning I thought they looked a little bit bare from the front, so I’ve also glued some cream ribbon round the envelope and covered the join with a smaller patterned leaf.

It all sort of came to me as I went along, but I can see how I can build on these when it comes to designing the invitations.

And I've now got a pot of tiny leaves stamped out from the cards that will make lovely table confetti!