Here we go:
This is my sister and the table covered with our initial crafting equipment. You can see the bone scorer, precut stardream-type cardstock, the first folded invites, the slicer, and my special archival bookbinding glue. The cardstock was custom cut by my dear friends at paperandmore.com who took my exact specifications and, for $5, saved me the headache of having to cut all those straight lines for myself. Sadly, they do not die-cut.
The slicer was used to die-cut the slits in which the inserts would sit. I got this, somehow, at Pearl Arts and Crafts on South Street for like 7 dollars. It's big enough to cut 8.5x11 paper, and has an extending arm for measuring, if you need it. I didn't, for this.
Here is a closeup of what I did with the slicer. I carefully calculated the length of the slits and their distance from each side of the final folded piece, did a little addition, and marked off the ends of the die-cuts with little slivers of post-it paper tacked to the underside of the clear slicing guard. This way, I knew just where to start and stop my cut. Whether I actually did start and stop is another matter.
After being die-cut, each piece was scored, using a template I originally intended to use to make the die-cuts. We found that the straightest template was the one I stopped in the middle of. Little sister did most of the scoring, marking two folds creating two card-sized panels and one roughly quarter inch flap for gluing.
You may wonder why the flap is important at all. Well, there are two reasons: first, the look of two naked edges glued flat together seems significantly less elegant and finished than a naked edge to a fold. Second and more importantly, the inside of the piece needs to have lots of open room for the inserts to slide into, and the folded tube shape is less likely to glue itself flat than the edge-to-edge shape.
This is an above view of several nested pieces of cardstock before gluing. A note on folding this stardream-style cardstock: score well and fold slowly. This will give you nice shiny folded edges. Unfortunately, I learned this too late, so mine are a little rough and cracked, but I've resigned myself to hoping no one notices. I'm sure not redoing them with fresh paper just for that.
Using a rubber stamp I got at AC Moore, and a clear embossing ink, I stamped a standard distance from the top corner of the non-die-cut side of the card. I generally just "eyeballed" this, getting a feel for the placement with my fingertips in relation to the edges of the cardstock.
Then I used a silver embossing powder to cover the still-wet ink.
After lifting the cardstock to tap off the un-stuck powder (and gently brushing off some reluctant powder with a brush), sometimes it would be perfect, as above.
Other times, I'd get little mutant lines or missed spots and need to add more dust. You can see both problems in the image above.
Either of these situations could be handled with a fine brush.
Once that was all taken care of, we had to melt the powder. Yes, this is a straightening iron. You can see that the left side is shiny and melted while the right is powdery, as before. This takes a few seconds, but is very very cool to watch.
Here you can see a finished embossing.
Here, a bunch of embossed cardstock, folded and waiting to be glued.
These were glued on three sides...the long side with the flap and the two short sides to keep people from tearing them open like greeting cards.
Next, the glued cards were pressed between Deathly Hallows, Half-Blood Prince, Women in Rock, Mists of Avalon, Infinite Jest, and Billboard's Top 40. This is to keep them folded flat while the glue bonds. You may see the blank card in the stack to the upper left...that's because I originally forgot that the cards should be embossed before gluing! Not a big deal, and we were able to emboss them after gluing, but the glue tended to melt a bit and need to be redone. Plus the stardream-style cardstock tends to warp a bit when you heat it for embossing, so the pressing is needed to flatten that out, as well.
Here, you can just see the difference between the freshly glued cards (left) and the pressed ones on the right which are much flatter.
After a night spent between heavy books, I have a good number of invite base pieces!
In the end, I sorted them into four piles: Use these first, Not great but okay, Might be salvageable, and No way - For experimenting only. The first stack covers the A-list plus a little bit. If we get too far into the B-list, I will get nervous. I had a lot more in the last pile than I expected to have, so if you tackle something like this for yourself, definitely prepare for a high "spoilage" rate. Overall, I had about 80% in the first two stacks and 20% in the others. But, each time I start a new step of the process, I can experiment on some of the duds until I get the hang of it, which should hopefully save me from much additional spoilage. Besides, the worst is over. I did these in installments over a few nights and, as mentioned, had some help from Little Sister.
This was not quite as nerve-wracking as I'd expected, and a lot easier than I thought it would be to handle without hordes of sweatshop workers.
Ever embarked on a mass hand-crafting adventure? How did it go?
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