This year, Kate decided to have a small little party, with just a few of her friends (thank goodness...). We will be taking the birthday girl, and 4 of her bffs, to Justice for a shopping spree and then to Cici's Pizza for dinner...sounds fun, doesn't it?
We made her invitations using my new favorite toy...my Lifestyle Crafts Letterpress system...oh my heck. A few years ago I became aware of this whole letterpress thing and I've always wanted to try my hand at it. Well, now that I have, I'm not sure I could ever go back to store-bought cards and invitations.
These are the printing plates I used...the "Splendor" plates...perfect, huh?
GUESS WHAT? FROM NOW THROUGH APRIL 15, THE "SPLENDOR" LETTERPRESS PLATES ARE 25% OFF! WOO HOO! AND IF YOU USE THE CODE "MIDWESTERN" AT CHECKOUT YOU GET AN ADDITIONAL 20% OFF! NOW WHAT COULD BE BETTER THAN THAT???
And this is how I made the invitations...
Then I inked up the brayer...this was fun...the ink is kind of sticky and thick (which surprised me a little), so it's fun to play
...this is actually a photo of the plate post-printing...but I wanted you to see how it looked with ink on it...
Then I rolled the ink onto the printing plate I chose for the invites, closed the lid on top of the
paper I was using, ran the whole thing through the Epic 6 Tool (which is also a die-cutter AND an embosser...awesome)...
...those foam things are guides so that each paper is lined up the same way as the one before it...perfect impressions every single time...
Here are the 5 that I made (I made one extra just in case I messed something up...which I didn't...a miracle if there ever was one...)...
After these dried (which took a rather long time...like 2 days until they were COMPLETELY dry...I'm wondering if I over-inked), I headed back to the machine and printed "you're invited" in the middle of each white circle. Then, after that dried, I took some rub-ons I had around and added them to the invites.
Oh my gosh...I love these things!!!
Kate wrote out the details on the backs of the cards and we included this little tag in the envelopes...
Yay! Yay! Yay! I also made some little favor bags with the Letterpress system...I'll be posting about those tomorrow...AND I'll be including a little tutorial on something fun I did to dress the bags up a little...here's a little teaser...
Ooooh, have I piqued your interest? I hope so...
DISCLOSURE: Lifestyle Crafts sent me a Letterpress Combo Kit and the printing plates and ink used for these invitations. All opinions stated are my own...100%. I think this system is wicked-awesome and I love how the letterpress printing turned out. It's really classy looking...totally different from printing from your home computer and it's super-easy to do.
