Oh So Beautiful Paper

Happy Monday everyone!  Our first set of invitations this week comes to us from longtime reader Maia.  Maia and her fiancé Chad are getting married next month and created a fantastic set of DIY invitations on a super-tight budget – and she’s here to tell us all about it!  I’m loving the red and gray color palette and the custom ampersand that Maia created just for her invitations…

From Maia: Our wedding is small and with a super tight budget of under $2,000 in total cost.  We ended up creating, designing, and making the invitations completely ourselves.  It was a long process, and with many sweat, tears, curses, and everything in between, but we’re both thrilled with the outcome!

The following day after our marriage in Chicago, we are packing up and moving ourselves across the Country to sunny Los Angeles to continue our creative passions.  Our concept for the invitations was to keep them upbeat, fun, and lovely as a celebration of our union, as well as a huge goodbye bash, and at the same time, clean, for my minimalist loving heart.

I started out by creating a hand drawn custom map of our reception location and staple landmarks of Chicago for our out-o-town guests.  I left the back of the map blank for the fella to design with a list of directions and things to see and places to eat. The main invitations were designed by my fiancé using an ampersand that I created. The RSVPs were with designed with a illustrated flag along with our wedding website information.

For the invitation belly band, we purchased an embossing stamp with our initials.  I also made a flag garland stamp to dress up the belly band and envelopes.  I paired the garland stamp with silver embossing powder.

Check out Maia’s blog, Little Dwell, for lots more details.  Thanks Maia!

Photo Credits: Maia and Chad

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1. Melissa says:

   04/02/2012 at 3:55 PM

   I’m trying to create my own handmade wedding invitations, rsvp’s, etc and I love what you’ve done. How did you get the ampersand and the other things set up the way you wanted? What software program did you use? I’ve created my own ampersand, (hand drawn and scanned) and I have the wording ready, but I’m trying to get it all together and it’s not really coming out the way I want…Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
2. Julia Stotz says:

   04/03/2011 at 5:18 PM

   Maia,

   These invites are just perfect. I love your style. You did such a great job!

   Hope all is well.

   Julia
3. Maia
   Twitter: littledwell
   says:

   03/31/2011 at 10:33 AM

   Thanks so much for featuring our invitations!
4. jaclyn @ thelateafternoon says:

   03/28/2011 at 10:24 PM

   these are so simple and lovely! love the pops of red
5. Gaelan @ Uschi and Kay
   Twitter: gaelancormier
   says:

   03/28/2011 at 10:06 AM

   I love the hand drawn wedding map!