The Clownfish Invitations: Designing & Printing Process

After I gathered all the invitation inspiration I needed and was confident in the direction I wanted to go in, I got to work within iScrapbook and started to create out wedding invites! Like I've mentioned before, iScrapbook is a dumbed-down version of Photoshop, which is perfect for me, the gal who doesn't know too much about graphic design. I've had iScrapbook downloaded on my Mac for years (confession: I'm a closet digital scrapbooker) so I knew my way around the program fairly well and was familiar with how the program worked. I knew I needed some pretty watercolor flower graphics, and started the search for ones that weren't too expensive but also gave me the "look" I was going for.

Does this make me look incredibly lame yet?

One I found the perfect clip-art flowers, I got to work within iScrapbook and started layering, resizing, and (slightly) altering the color of the flowers and leaves. This process took about an hour from start to finish, once I figure out how I wanted the flowers arranged around the border. I started laying the floral graphics on the bottom of the invitation first, and eventually made my way around...

Once all the flowers and leaves were on the invitation, the OCD bride in me took over and I spent another 30-ish minutes slightly adjusting each clip-art's position, angle, etc. While I wanted the top and the bottom to look balanced (same number of big flowers, berries, etc.), I didn't want them to be perfectly symmetrical. I liked the asymmetrical look and, to be honest, I would have driven myself slightly insane trying to match both of the sides perfectly. 

Once the floral border was the way I wanted it, it was time to add text! I spent another hour or so searching for the perfect fonts to use, which was no easy task. Every "handwritten" font I found clashed with the floral border, or took too much attention away from it. There were fonts I would have loved to use, but decided that I needed to keep it simple and stick to a more timeless font. Mixing fonts was part of the plan, and I was happy to finally find two fonts that complimented not only each other, but the floral border perfectly. For the detail text part of the invitation I used "Athelas" and for our names I used "Zapfino"...

I repeated this process with our RSVP card, using the same florals and fonts, but in a slightly different way...

I decided to omit a "details" card, since our Save-the-Dates had our wedding website on them, and every out-of-town guest was personally contacted with hotel and travel information. I wanted to keep the suite simple, so I stuck with the actual invite and a RSVP. Nothing fancy, nothing extra. Just the bare essentials!

Instead of going through Vistaprint, or another printing company, I opted to get them printed right through my campus printer's office. Located a mere fifty steps from my dorm room, I loved being able to talk to the office worker's in person and tell them what I had in mind. They were also experts at printing invites, since I seen so many of my friends get their wedding invites printed there and was always so pleasantly surprised at the final product.  The office had their own supply of card stock in dozens of colors, and they allowed me to do as many test-prints as I wanted until my invites came out perfect. They also cut the invitations for me, which saved me SO much time and effort, especially since all this was being done during finals week.

To get 60 full-color invitations and RSVP's printed, I spent a whopping...wait for it...$22. #Hallelujah for my campus' printing room.

Next up: the final invitation reveal and budget breakdown!