DIY Invitations Part V: What's on the Outside Matters Too

When it came to the outer envelopes we felt it was important to have them all hand addressed. A calligrapher was not in the budget so we had to come up with a way to improvise. While browsing Wedding Bee I came across Mrs. Labrador's post about fauxligraphy...and thought I can do that!

Some Fauxligraphy Tips:
1. This works best on non-white envelopes. For some reason, no matter what marker/pen I used on the white envelopes the ink soaked in around printed text and was evident that I traced.

2. Textured paper makes tracing soooo much harder! Try to avoid having to trace on textured paper it made my pen strokes look all the more sloppy.

3. Test out your writing apparatus A LOT. I can say this enough: practice, practice, practice. Practice writing each letter, practice using the marker/pen it really made a difference in the quality of my work.

I pulled up every calligraphy font I could find on my computer and on dafont and started practicing. The Mr. even tried his hand at some practice tracing but it wasn't a pretty sight. ;) We eventually settled on the same font Mrs. Labrador used.

After some trial and error (trying every color in the rainbow) I found the best way to print on the black envelopes and still see the print was to use LIME GREEN text. It was really faint but you could make it out.

Then me and my silver sharpie (regular tip) went to town....



I wrote our return address on the back flap in my regular handwriting and then we finished the envelopes off with the King and Queen of Hearts stamps.

We ended up doing inner envelopes as well (these came with our invitation suite from Michael's) but just printed everyone's names in the Renaissance font instead of handwriting them. What can I say my hand was pooped after the outer envelopes.

Black envelopes (6x9 Booklet Style) from Envelope Mall: 200 for $30

Silver Sharpies (4pk): $5

King and Queen of Hearts stamps: $88

Total cost per invitation: $1.03

Grand total for entire invitation: $3.37

Up next: Mailing these puppies out! :)