Excited to start the DIY series with how I DIY-ed my wedding invite - from the watercolour paper to the floral design!
The Inspiration
So I've been following this Youtube channel called The Sorry Girls for a while, and they happened to do a wedding series. I really loved the blush watercolour paper they made, and it inspired me to do my own! You can watch their video here.
I bought watercolour paper and large brushes from Artfriend, and cheap watercolour paints from Ezbuy. It was quite fun doing this in batches, and by the end of it my whole living room was covered with paper.
Tips:
Get thicker watercolour paper so that it's sturdier and the paint doesn't drip through (mine was 300g/m^2)
Use those dry watercolour pallets instead of tube ones as they're actually easier to blend (cheap paints work well for this)
Surprisingly, my colour didn't come from the pink pallet but brownish and peachy hues combined. Experiment with different colours to see what you like before duplicating.
The Design
The wedding invite came a long way from the first draft. I'm really proud of the final design because I literally put each flower, leaf and golden dot together till I achieved the effect I wanted. I purchased this collection of digital elements and used Photoshop to arrange them.
First draft > Final draft
I initially used the ready-made floral arrangements provided in the set, but they didn't fit the page well. The set also comes with the individual elements, so I used those instead. I love to download pretty fonts, so these came in handy when designing our wedding invites. I am still deciding whether to sell this design, so if anyone is interested please leave a comment :)
Printing Vendors
I printed my invites (as well as program booklets) with The Colour Shop. It's a small shop located at Bras Basah Complex. They quoted me the prices below when I e-mailed in, and the main pro was that they allowed me to use my own paper. They are also quite fast in printing and you can normally collect it within a few days. I spent around $49 in total for around 110 invites (54 single-sided prints).
A4 single side print - $0.90
A4 double side print - $1.50'
I also explored printing in JB because it's cheaper to do foil stamping there (I think). I came across P&L printing in a few Dayre entries, and they are conveniently located at City Square mall. The con is that they said it would be difficult to use my own paper for foil stamping, so I didn't use them in the end. It's worth checking out though, they have some pretty designs and you can choose gold, rose gold etc for the foil stamping.
Cute Seal
My bridesmaids and I spent a few hours on this, but it was definitely worth it. We got a lot of compliments on the invite and the seal through Whatsapp and Instastories haha. If you can't see clearly, it's two pigs with a little heart above them.
I bought the seal from Ezbuy. It was an existing design, but you can also customize your own. Wax pallets and melting spoon were from Taobao. Both sources have lots of options for colours and seals, so have fun browsing! You can easily buy a whole set of candles from some provision shops or Mustafa. Candle holders were from IKEA.
Here's a video of us in the process (ignore the sounds):
I was deciding whether to cut out the part with the imperfect seal, but the reality is it's really hard to get a perfect seal like the photo above! So be ready to accept these imperfections (unless you're super pro and figure out how to do it everytime haha) and move on, or you might never finish them. As you can see, it takes a while to melt and you also have to wait a while before taking the seal off so as not to spoil the design.
Tips:
Buy extra pallets if you like the colour - I couldn't get the same pink pallets as they were out of stock, and we used 3 for each invite instead of 1 as I expected.
Buy more seals too if you don't mind spending a bit more, as more people can use it simultaneously and it'll quicken the process.
Play music and get your bridesmaids to help out - it can be a fun process ^^
Photo Invite
Very extra haha but I did this cute and simple design using the photo from our Tiong Bahru photoshoot. Even though it was only for my mum's immediate family, I decided to do it for fun. Our Day 2 invites were settled by Qian Xi (they have lots of designs to choose from), so I didn't have to worry about that. Like I said, it was really a fuss-free experience with them! You can also try using Canva to design your own invites if you don't have photoshop.
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