Thinking about designing Wedding Stationery where to start

[BeauticianNotMagician]

Hi I am currently on maternity leave. I am getting married myself next year and I want to design my own invites,favours and all finishing touches.

It got me thinking about getting into card making and if I'm any good perhaps making some money out of it. But where do I start. What do I need and is it an impossible task ?

Not sure how useful this will be but I made my own invites last year, they were simple double A5 on black card with overlaid white card (to create a black border if that makes sense) on both sides. I did all of the printing on my home computer, and only other thing included was a peacock feather (from ebay, quite cheap) and a bit of ribbon on the front and they still ended up costing us about £100 to make, including a new B&W printer cartridge, cheap craft knife, glue and envelopes. that was for about 70 invites.

I dont think they ended up being much cheaper than paying a company to just print them, and took absolutely AGES to make if you want the edges perfect etc, so make sure you really can be bothered before you commit to it. Although making them myself was very satisfying, they were exactly what I wanted and lots of people commented on how lovely they were and couldn't believe I made them myself.

I also considered attempting to try and make some money from it afterwards, but I dont think that what you could charge for labour would compensate you adequately for the amount of time and effort they take to do. Although definately make your own if you have a clear idea of what you want and want them to be one-offs.

It really does depend on the design you are after and how much you want to spend. The world of paper crafting is endless.

You can buy your own card blanks, envelopes, etc

You could save money long term, by buying a scoring board and folding your own cards. This gives you more variety of folds/design of card base, etc.

Die cut shapes, you can buy in packs...or go the whole hog and get your own die cutting machine.....

If you wanted something "easy" like a simple but gorgeous ribbon, perhaps a little charm.....lots to consider; sentiment, inserts, gorgeous papers....shall I go on.

I have paper crafted for about 11 years now and have a room dedicated to crafting!

Get yourelf down to Hobbycraft for some ideas and inspiration!