Ch. 10 – What STD Do I Want?

….Save The Date that is! (sorry—bridal lingo from my fellow knotties over at TheKnot)

I couldn’t wait to get our engagement pictures back because my next DIY project was our save the dates!  Our plan was to send them out with our Christmas cards—save two birds with one stone!  As you saw, we had a lot of great pictures to choose from.  First, I wanted them to be magnets.  I received my first magnet save the date this past winter and I loved how we just put it on the fridge and knew right where it was when I needed to reference it.  No need to dig through piles of papers to find out when the wedding was.  For inexpensive magnets, we looked at a variety of websites and decided on VistaPrint (http://www.vistaprint.com).  When you go to their website, you can sign up for their email newsletter and your inbox will be filled with free offers!  Who doesn’t love free?!?

We now needed a design.  I started the ball rolling by creating a very simple design however I felt something was missing.  I then handed my design over to the ever so crafty fiancé to see what he could do with it.  This is what we ended up with:

I loved it!  Using my handy dandy email coupons, I ordered 10 free magnets from Vistaprint.  There is an image upload fee (I got ½ off so it was $2.49) however once you upload an image you can use it as many times as you want and with as many different items as you want.  Shipping and processing was $4.94—we chose the 21 day option.  My total was $7.43…what a deal!  I checked the website daily waiting for the status to change to “shipped”—a week later they were delivered to Syracuse!  However, I was two hours away….but Justin took pictures and sent them to me.  The first complaint was that the wording was too small, something I thought about before I ordered.  The other problem was the lack of the wow factor.  I wanted people to open it up and say “wow!”  There was too much going on and it was difficult to figure out where to look first.  The quality of the magnets was great but the design needed to be tweaked.  We now have to find a way to use 10 magnets….oh well!

We had many options for the redesign.  First, this amazing little site called Etsy (http://www.etsy.com).  This site has so many different things and they are all homemade…..ranging from knit hats to cake toppers to jewelry and everything paper!  There are many designers that set up shop and showcase their abilities.  In one section, you can create a request for a custom order.  You write a description, price, and deadline for what you are looking for.  Designers then bid on your request and write a description of what their vision is for your product.  My thought here was that we can explain our color scheme and vision for our wedding and see what save the date ideas these designers come up with.  That was the problem—I wanted our save the dates to be done by us.  While it would have been amazing for someone to design them for us, it is nothing like working on something and being so proud of the finished product.

Our next stop was over to MagnetStreet (http://www.magnetstreet.com).  There are so many designs to choose from!  This site also came with great reviews from other brides.  While we were still focused on creating our design ourselves it doesn’t hurt to get a little inspiration.  That was the main goal of visiting this site and I think we reached that goal quite well.

So, what did we decide on?  What does our final STD look like?  Well, the big reveal will come once they hit mailboxes (don’t want to spoil the surprise!) J  All I can say is that they are AMAZING!