Archivers Bridal Showcase

Before I left Louisville for my extended trip all over every where, I went to a wedding craft workshop at Archivers. It's a pretty neat store, dedicated to scrapbooking, card making, and other paper crafts. The workshop was pretty straight-forward: a representative went through some pictures and ideas for wedding invitations and associated stationery projects, a lot of which I had seen before, but it was nice to see the emphasis on DIY. Some were really easy, and even someone with no card-making experience could pull them off; there were also a lot of projects that involved stamping, embossing, and other card-making techniques that I've never attempted, but again, don't look incredibly hard (but I bet it becomes an expensive hobby!).

Then we got to try out some of the fun stuff: paper punches, markers and pens with different types of inks and tips, and we got to ooh and aah over their line of invitation stationery. I do love touching pretty paper. We also learned how to line an envelope, and got to try it ourselves.

It's not too hard; Paper Source sells plastic templates for tracing out liners, and I've also read that an easy way to do it is to measure out a template that is exactly 1/8" smaller than the actual envelope. At Archivers, they suggested a different method: tracing the envelope directly to get the right curve for the flap, then trimming the two vertical sides down to fit. It worked really well, and here was my final product:


One important lesson I learned was to not use a liner paper with a line/graph pattern unless you're REALLY into being anal and making sure all the lines are parallel/perpendicular to the envelope. No, thank you.

The other cool tool I used to make the liner was the Scor-it, which allows you to score paper to create a nice fold. You can also use a bone folder, and while I've never used a bone folder myself, the Scor-it was SO easy to use that I was completely sold. It's a pretty solid example of a unitasker, and while Alton Brown might object, I may be purchasing one of these in the near future. Gah, what wedding planning can convince you to do!

The only real problem with my lined envelope above, which you can see if you look closely, is that the liner is kind of crooked. That's because the adhesive tape I used was really sticky, and I positioned it badly. Fortunately, I also learned that there is a repositionable adhesive that becomes permanent only after 24 hours, which would be very useful. I also have a supply of Zots and other sticky dots that I'm sure I'll be using for various wedding craftiness.

So all in all, I would recommend the Archivers Bridal Showcase workshop. They offer it on a continual basis (at least, I see it on the calendar through July), it's less than 2 hours long, and it's FREE!

And speaking of Paper Source, the Weddingbees all write about it like it's some sort of paper mecca, which definitely makes me to want to check it out. Unfortunately, there's not one anywhere near Louisville, but there is one in D.C. and another in Alexandria -- I think I'll be making a visit while I'm here on the east coast!

**Update: I forgot to mention another tip the Archivers lady shared with us. If you buy cardstock/paper that's pre-cut in small sizes, and you need to print on it, it can be hard to feed it through a printer easily. Instead, use a removable glue dot to attach it to a full-sized sheet of paper, then feed it through the printer that way. When it's done, just remove the glue dot and it should come out perfectly!