Circus Party: Invites

Photo by Kristy Murphy Photography

Yeah, it's foiled.  You're jealous.

These invitations killed me.  Took 4 times longer to do than expected, but I was really into the idea of having foiled invitations.  I think I learned a lot from it....like that my laser printer drops everything 1/8 of an inch down the page.  I originally printed it dual sided, but I felt it wasn't weight-y enough--and foiling on two sides at once is a pain--so I printed it on 2 pages of standard red stock, and then I sandwiched slightly heavier navy card stock (A9 sized, from PaperSource).  But that late switch required a lot more layout work, putting the project behind schedule.  

Photo by Kristy Murphy Photography

I bought the circus silhouette clip art off Etsy, and I downloaded a bunch of awesome circus fonts.  Namely Circus, Coney Island, and Movieola (find more awesome circus fonts here).  The tent image and tight rope walker were manipulated google images--thanks to Pixlr (i.e., free Photoshop).  I laid everything out in Pages (Apple's word processor).  It's pretty great for laying things out.    

After stalking stationer message boards, I learned that the pros (or the pros who participate in such message boards) like the Scotch Tape Gun and Zip Dry.  Both are zero wrinkle.  Scotch recently released a "consumer" version of the tape gun.  Way cheaper b/c it is plastic.  The tape gun is pretty cool (and I think I used it on the vast majority of the invites), but it pales in comparison to my new best friend, Zip Dry.  It is totally cured in 10 minutes!!  I used it on TONS of stuff, including the envelopes, which are lined in wrapping paper hoarded from last Christmas.

Warning about the Minc foiler.  It is pretty good, but it's tiny inconsistencies (any particle of dust results in no adhesion) make it less than professional.  And sending out 20 or so invites....I'd guess at least 30 were printed, maybe more.  There was a high error rate.  I took to using a swiffer duster on the printed paper and the foiling envelope, which helped some.  The envelopes have a static cling to them--holds everything in place--which is killer in my house.  Glitter, cat hair, my hair....all have ruined a foiling.  If you live in a place certified to manufacture implanted medical devices, you will be golden.  The back side with the full gold silhouettes had the most problem--I definitely printed  and foiled considerably more of that side.  

Also, I learned that gold pen on navy envelopes is not postal friendly.  For the mailed envelopes (all in-town/metro area addresses), time ranged from 6 postal days to 11 postal days.  Which is more than I had budgeted for.  But per this month's MS Weddings, I should be happy they made it at all b/c the post office has rules against dark colored envelopes.  So now you know.  

Was it worth it?  I don't know.  I think they were better than anything I could have purchased, which is a plus.  I had really good feedback from them.  Kids, like me, are enamored with the foil.  The trade-off was a little bit of finish on the party--we were crafting that morning (sign making), and some things didn't get done or just didn't get installed.