Shoebox: Wedding Invitations & Gift Bags

Carol Duvall Show : Episode CDS-1545 -- More Projects »
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There were some wonderful ideas in the Shoebox today starting with one from Yvonne Hernandez of Bayamon, Puerto Rico. It all started when a friend of Yvonne's was planning to get married. It was to be a rather small wedding. She was going to send out only 25 invitations, but to order such a small number was going to be very expensive, so Yvonne offered to make them herself. Here is what she did...

She first found a font on her computer that she liked and thought would be suitable, composed the invitation, and printed it out on vellum. The vellum did not absorb the ink as your standard printer's paper does, so it stayed wet, which made it perfect for Yvonne to sprinkle with embossing powder and heat, making the invitations embossed. The embossing powder she used was silver with some glitter in it, so it looked quite grand. She then added a stamped image of a rose in a couple of places and embossed them as well. When all the printing and embossing were completed, she placed the vellum on top of a colorful piece of paper cut to the same size and joined them with a sheer ribbon bow along the top.

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We were so impressed with the idea that we tried following Yvonne's directions. We printed out invitations on white vellum (we were able to get two on one page), then cut them to size using deckle-edged scissors. This piece was placed over a piece of flat gold paper cut just slightly larger than the vellum overlay, and this in turn was placed on top of a piece of ecru paper cut slightly larger. All were joined in the same manner Yvonne used by pulling a length of sheer ribbon thru two holes at the top of the page. Very elegant looking and certainly less expensive than having them done commercially. Great idea!
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Another good idea was that sent in by Louise Waln of Camarillo, Calif. Louise buys inexpensive little gift bags and then gussies them up in various ways and gives a bunch of them as the gifts themselves. She has fun decorating them and they save the recipient a lot of gift wrapping time. Louise teaches origami in her town's Leisure Village, and she uses many paper-folding tricks in her bag decorating. The folded decorative paper gets glued to the front of the bag and, with some fancy handles added or a folded-over top secured with raffia, a plain bag has become a grand gift container.
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