January 20, 2014

DIY Wedding program scrolls

Initially I considered not having wedding programs at all, because honestly it just seemed like big waste of paper. I've seen very elaborate programs that have pages and pages of information, photos, hymns and at the end of the day it all gets tossed out with the trash.  But I was torn because as a guest at weddings I do prefer to have a program,  to have an idea of the order of events.  It also saves me from boredom when there is a lot of waiting involved. I decided to create my own very basic, very simple and yet stylish program scrolls using the minimum amount of paper possible.

I designed a simple layout  using Pages on my macbook, in such a way that each program would only use up half of a standard letter size sheet of paper. When I was happy with the layout, I sent it over to Staples to be printed. I love love love printing at Staples. Did I mention that I love printing at staples? I used them a lot for all my DIY wedding paper projects. Their printers lend your work a professional look that your home printer simply can't achieve even if you have a laser printer at home. It is also more cost effective to print with them then print large amounts of paper on your own.  Of course I still had a few issues with Staples making a few errors such as printing on the wrong paper,  but they were always more than happy to reprint at no cost to me. I chose to have these programs printed on linen paper because the weight and texture of it looked more wedding appropriate than plain copy paper. As I mentioned earlier the programs printed out in such a way that each sheet of paper had two programs, so I had to cut it in half. Staples offered to cut it for me but I felt it wasn't worth what they wanted to charge me so I pulled out my fiskars paper cutter and did it myself. Tedious!

Once I had cut all the programs to size, now came the fun part; the rubber stamping. I did a lot of rubber stamping for my wedding. I guess you could call me a rubber stamping addict? I just love the way a simple rubber stamp and the right ink can transform a plain piece of paper into a work of art. I also love that using the same set of rubber stamps on different projects, ties everything together by creating a uniform signature look. The first project I used rubber stamping on, was my invitation suite and it wasn't as easy as I thought it would be, and I'll be posting about that in more detail soon. But by the time my invitations were mailed I was a certified rubber stamping expert, so I decided to use it on several other projects.

Since the back of programs were blank I decided to use two rubber stamps to decorate them. Firstly a large stamp for the center of the page, and then a really small 'signature' row of hearts stamp for the corner. I used the same hearts stamp for the escort cards later on. I came across the large "wedding words" stamp shown below and i just knew I had to have it.


It was such a simple stamp and yet spoke volumes to me. I knew that with the right ink, on the right paper, this stamp would come to life! I decided to use the same gold pigment ink I had used for my invitations and this is how it turned out!




Many people asked me how I was able to get the stamp to be so perfectly aligned in the center of every single program, I really wanted to say; it's because I'm just that amazing, and I just happen to  have the steadiest hand in the universe... but that would not be true. Instead I found this product called the Stamp-a-ma-jig. Yeah I know, ridiculous name, but it really works. It's a two piece alignment tool that enables you to get the perfectly placed stamp everytime.







I then used the overlapping hearts stamp on the top left corner and bottom right corner of the page. I did this so that when I rolled the paper into a scroll, the hearts would show on the edge of the paper, no matter which way I rolled it.

My awesome parents helped by cutting lots of pink and brown ribbon to size and sealing the ends with a liquid sealant to prevent it from fraying. So once I was ready to roll up the programs I had the perfect cuts of ribbon to hold the scrolls in place, and voila the finished product!