Debby and Michael's Invitations
We wanted our wedding to be personalized yet tasteful and figured that the invitations would be a good place to start. After numerous consultations with the goddess of creative invitations, Donna Perger (who also happened to be Michael's seventh grade math teacher), we decided to construct a laminated invitation.
The outside of the card features African Violets under a layer of virtually transparent silk paper. A backing of deli wrap provides structural integrity. Glue holds it all together and gives texturing.
Printing on the flower paper would not be feasible. We laser printed the invitation on a stark white paper that had a linen finish. Outer envelopes, reply cards, and reply evelopes were found in the same paper and also were laser printed.
We think that they turned out nicely:
Let us provide more detail:
The Flowers
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We pressed the petals from 28 African Violets. Each plant produced at least three bloomings, so we were able to collect several hundred flowers. The flowers with strong colors tended to work better than the flowers with large amounts of white; the white turned brown when dried. We have been able to use the extra flower petals in everything from decorating the plastic cups for the pre-wedding cookout to making table cards.
(Our house looks very nice with all of these African Violets!)
- The Papers
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We found a beautiful, transparent silk paper called San Wa Tissue at the Paper Source in Cambridge. This paper features large silk fibers and tiny metal flecks of silver and gold. Structural integrity of the outside of the card is provided by deli wax, the same material in which your doughnuts come. Deli wax can be found in large grocery stores. The paper on which text is printed was purchased from Pearl Arts and Supplies in Cambridge.
- The Assembly
- An 8x5 card was traced onto the deli wax. Between 2 and 4 flowers were artistically arranged and glued in the space. The San Wa Tissue was glued on top with modpodge glue, a clear craft glue available anywhere. The composite was placed on a flat surface an allowed to dry. Cutting along the marked lines produced the final card. The inner printed card and the outer flower card were attached together with a thin silver cord.
