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Pancake Brunch: DIY Stationery + Favors

This morning’s Pancakes & Honey Breakfast shoot featured several handmade wedding projects, and the team of Suzy from Lily Red Studio, Kelly Marie from Fleur, and Jaclyn Simpson Photography have been kind enough to share their DIY secrets with us! They created several projects – click on the links below to jump to the instructions for your favorite:

Escort Card Frame · Decorative Tags · Birdseed Pouches · Honey Dipper Favors · Invitation Set

Escort Cards & Escort Card Display

Escort-Card-Pin-Board1

Supplies needed:

  • Frame ­ (remove glass). Choose a frame large enough to accomodate your cards, or display multiple coordinating frames.
  • Foam core, preferably with an adhesive side – cut down to a size that will fit in your frame(s); must be thick enough to be able to stick a map pin in without showing though the opposite side
  • Fabric – ­must be a large enough piece of fabric to wrap at least 2″ beyond the size of your trimmed foam core board
  • Adhesive
  • Map Pins
  • 2″ reach ribbon hole punch
  • Pool satin ribbon ­ trimmed to 3″
  • Natural White Cover stock ­ trimmed to 3” x 1.5”

Escort Card Frame

  1. Trim your foam core to a size that will fit snuggly to the interior of your frame.
  2. If using a board that has an adhesive front, remove the protective liner; if using regular foam core, adhere a generous amount of adhesive to the front.
  3. Position and wrap your pre-cut material around all four edges of the foam core (similar to wrapping a present) and adhere to the back of the boards using adhesive or map pins to ensure the material will stay in place.
  4. Secure the wrapped foam core piece to the inside of your frame (some frames may come with an existing backing, if yours does not, a few small nails or thumbtacks applied to the back inner edges should keep the foam core in place)

Escort Cards

  1. These escort cards were designed using in Adobe Illustrator but you can use any design program, even Microsoft Word, to position multiple 1.5 x 3″ cards per page. They are printed on both sides (name on front, table number on back). Printing on two sides using your home printer may be tricky, you may also want to consider hand-writing or hiring a calligrapher to write the table numbers and/or names on your escort cards. You should be able to fit 10-12 cards on one 8.5 x 11″ sheet.
  2. Print the designs on a home printer or send to your local digital printer. Using an X-acto knife and mat, or a paper trimmer, cut out cards.
  3. Position your 2” ribbon hole punch to the left side of the name on the card (center the punch from top to bottom). Apply pressure to create a hole.
  4. Thread your pre-cut satin ribbon through the holes and trim any fraying edges.

Ribbon-Threaded-Escort-Cards1

Helpful note: Decide ahead of time how your escort card frame(s) will be displayed. ­ Will you need an easel, can you hang them on a wall, or will you lean them on a table?

Decorative Tags for Birdseed Pouches and Honey Dipper Favors

Supplies needed:

  • Natural white cover stock – ­trimmed to 1.25 x 3″
  • 1/8″ hole punch
  • Eyelets (Pool)
  • Eyelet Setter
  • Hammer
  • Adhesive

Helpful note: Keep track of your guest list using an excel spreadsheet format for easy copying and pasting of names.

  1. These decorative tags were designed using in Adobe Illustrator but you can use any design program, even Microsoft Word, to position multiple 1.25 x 3″ tags per page.
  2. Print the designs on a home printer or send to your local digital printer. Using an X-acto knife and mat, or a paper trimmer, cut out tags.
  3. Punch a 1/8″ hole in the upper left corner of your tag.
  4. Position an eyelet in the hole you’ve created and set with an eyelet setter. Position the eyelet setter in the hole on the back of the eyelet and a hammer the top of the eyelet setter, tapping gently – at least a few times to create a curl in the back shaft of the eyelet (test this out until you’ve adhered the eyelet to the paper — it should not move or fall out).

Birdseed Pouches

Supplies needed:

  • Gold satin ribbon ­ trimmed to 10-12”
  • Bouquet Garni Bags (sold 12 per pack at Whole Foods)
  • Bird Seed (loose)

Birdseed-Pouches1

  1. Fill each bag with a small handful of loose birdseed and pull the drawstring on the bag closed.
  2. Tie the strings once and trim the strings to approximately 2” in length.
  3. Secure a piece of the trimmed ribbon around the base of the drawstrings/mouth of the bag; tie once.
  4. Thread the ribbon through eyelet in the decorative tag and knot one more time and tie a bow, trimming any fraying edges.

Honey Dipper Favors

Supplies needed:

  • Decorative tags (directions above)
  • Honey Sticks
  • Honey Dippers
  • Pool satin ribbon ­ – trimmed to 12-15”

Honey-Dipper-Wedding-Favors1

  1. Secure your ribbon around the center of three Honey Sticks and a Honey Dipper ­ wrapping all items together while leaving a long enough portion of ribbon to tie a small bow (only knot — do not tie a bow at this point).
  2. Tie the ribbon once and thread the ribbon through eyelet in the decorative tag.
  3. Knot one more time and tie a bow, trimming any fraying edges.

Blue-Yellow-Retro-Wedding-Stationery1

Invitation Set Instructions

Includes: 5×7 Invite, RSVP Postcard, Directions Card, A7 Envelope with handmade envelope liner

Supplies needed:

  • X-acto knife and self-healing cutting mat, or scrapbook-style paper trimmer
  • Kiri-Ita Woodgrain paper – 8.5″ x 11″ paper – trimmed to 5 x 7″
  • Pool cover stock – 8.5″ x 11″ paper – trimmed to 4.75 x 6.75″
  • 110# Natural White cover stock – 8.5″ x 11″ paper – trimmed to 4.5 x 6.5″ (invitation), 4 x 4″ (directions card), and 4 x 6″ (RSVP card)
  • Adhesive
  • Fabric – trimmed to 3.5 x 6″
  • Pool satin ribbon – trimmed to 18″
  • Gravel A7 envelopes
  • Pool text weight stock – 8.5″ x 11″ paper
  • Gravel oval labels
  • Bone folder

Invitation

1) Using an x-acto blade and self-healing cutting mat or scrapbook-style paper trimmer trim Pool cover stock and Kiri-Ita Woodgrain paper to correct sizes.

2) Create your invitation design in Adobe Illustrator or similar tool

3) Print the design on a home printer. If your printer can handle off-size paper, trim the Natural White cover stock to correct size and then print. If your printer can only handle 8.5 x 11 paper, print, then cut. You can also send the design to a local digital printer and they will cut your paper for you and print the design.

4) Apply your choice of adhesive to the outer edges of the back of the printed page and adhere to the Pool cover stock, making sure it is centered.

Blue-Retro-Wedding-Invitations1

5) Hide any rough edges of the trimmed fabric by folding and taping to the opposite side of the material (only worry about the edges that are exposed on the long sides of the fabric; the edges on the shorter sides will be hidden when the invitation is completely assembled).

6) Adhere the fabric strip to the middle back of the trimmed Kiri-Ita Woodgrain backing stock. Wrap the edges around the backing stock and secure in place with double-sided tape (make sure to apply tape no more than .5” from the edge of the backing stock).

7) Wrap the ribbon around the piece created in step 6 and tie in a bow; the bow should rest at the center of the fabric strip. Trim any excess ribbon and secure the ribbon by applying tape over the ribbon on the opposite side.

Fabric-Belly-Band-Wedding-Invitations1

8) Adhere the back sides of the printed piece and woodgrain backing together, making sure they are centered.

Direction Card and RSVP Postcard

  1. Create your direction card and RSVP postcard design in Adobe Illustrator or similar tool
  2. Print the design on a home printer. If your printer can handle off-size paper, trim the Natural White cover stock to correct size and then print. If your printer can only handle 8.5 x 11 paper, print, then cut. You can also send the design to a local digital printer and they will cut your paper for you.
  3. Adhere a label to the back of the RSVP postcard; your return address can be hand written on this label, you may also print directly on the label
  4. Don’t forget to adhere a stamp to the back of your postcard!

DIY-Wedding-Invitations-21

A7 Envelope Liners

Note: you can also purchase pre-cut liners or envelope liner template kits at Paper Source

  1. Open an A7 envelope and cut off the right, left, and bottom flaps. Using an X-acto knife and mat, or a paper trimmer, trim .5″ from the bottom, left and right sides.
  2. Using this as a guide, trace into Pool text-weight paper and cut out your envelope liner.
  3. Insert liner into envelope. Once positioned, use a bone folder to crease your liner into the fold of the envelope. Apply adhesive to the fold area and adhere liner to envelope.

Pretty vows cards match the stationery. These are designed in Illustrator and printed on a home printer, then backed with woodgrain paper to coordinate with the invitation suite.

Wedding-Vow-Cards1

The team also created a table number in Illustrator and displayed in a pretty wooden frame, and used toothpicks to prop place cards in the pancakes. Love these little coordinating details!

Pancakes-Brunch-Wedding1Wood-Frame-Table-Number1

The following Chicago wedding vendors contributed to this inspirational wedding shoot:

Photography – Jaclyn Simpson Photography \ Floral and table design – Fleur \ Stationery – Lily Red Studio \ Venue – Salvage One

*Fleur is one of EAD’s fabulous featured vendors. For information on EAD’s editorial policies, click here.