The Poodles’ budget friendly invitations

The very first time I log into WeddingBee was while I was searching for inspiration for our invitations, while researching through the blog I found several amazing invitations, and a weird word at that time! Gocco. I wanted that little machine so bad!

Not just because I wanted to have DIY invitations, but because I loved the freedom you had on the design, plus the fact pretty much any surface can be screened by it. Yes I was in love. Sadly Gocco did not had a long future in supplies and the price was not on my budget.

I thought about different alternatives to make our invitation budget friendly and really pretty! My first Idea was to save ink by using fabric to pop color on our invitations. I had an idea of the kind of fabric I wanted for our invitations, but after I draw the pattern. I became obsessed with this particular pattern, the one I draw.




I did some quick research and found Spoonflower, a really cool website where you can upload your design and print your own fabric, but then again, when we finally set a number for invitations the price offered on that website was not on our budget :(  (But I’m still considering using that for some NWR project!)

So yeah. I was not going to have the perfect purple fabric, but still loved the idea of using sewed details, kraft paper and purple ink!

When I almost gave up to the idea of just print our invitations with Mr. Poodle’s printer. I found this giveaway. Free Brochures! I just had to look the potential out of this!!

To my surprise I actually won that giveaway and got 100 Free Brochures from Uprinting! HOW PERFECT! I could actually used the purple patter I loved and it was all going to be free!! ( well at least the first 100)

I loved the idea of having booklet invitations, just like Mrs. Lime! (I have to say that those invitations were the reason why I found Weddingbee!)

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So I got to work, I gather all the information I wanted on our invitations and divide them by page:

• Our names with the “together with our parents invite you to join us” date, time, address etc.
• Map and directions (I really wanted to draw my own map :) plus I could add our website address there too)
• RSVP postcard, we thought about doing it online but due the age of lots of our guest we chose to do it the old way
• Timeline of our relationship – After I saw this below I wanted a timeline really really bad :P

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So I had 4 pages of information, I tried as hard as I could to condensate all of the information to fit the 3 fold brochure (I did had to leave the timeline off the brochure), once Mr. Poodle and FMIL did the triple spelling check, I closed my eyes and push send, and 3 days later they were send to us!

I loved the way they ended up looking! but there was a lot of work to be done before they look like the invitations I envisioned. We had to cut the top and bottom of the brochure to make single pages, and then print the last page with the “love timeline”. We needed to sew all the pages together and make the Kraft paper belts.

On the other hand for our envelopes we also had a lot of work, I got a really cool deal back home. I bought 200 kraft paper envelopes for $2.00! Totally awesome, but that was because I went to the actual paper fabric :) a long trip very worth it at the end.

Did I mention that I got a little obsessed over a puncher? Yeah!! blame that on Martha!




Before I came I did all the hard work of putting the envelope apart, so now we only had to make the liners and sew the labels. So this is the way our liners look finish, just plain copy paper with cute edges ;)

Want to have a pick of our our invitations look like? well before I reveal our BIGGEST labor of love so far :) you can see the process of our envelopes!





First I draw a label template so I can fit 5 of them on a letter sheet. I used some of the same puncher graphic to make it prettier and one of my favorite free fronts ever!! Aquarelle <3




We cut them and used a corner punch (witch I previously measure so the lines match)





We arrange all of them so the sewing could be easier (yup we had a pretty cool assembly line at the Poodles' :P )




Notice that? I'm such a sucker for WeddingBee! and this will be the envelope that we will used on our wedding for the pro pics :)




A detail shot of the label edge…




… and some more details.


Did you used a company to print your DIY invitations? Are you making extra efforts to have budget friendly invitation?