Wednesday, September 22, 2010

DIY Escort Cards: A lighthearted Tutorial, Part Two

Alright! The rest of this is pretty intuitively obvious, but something about making a tutorial that only takes you half way seemed a little silly to me. In case you're just now entering this, the first part of this tutorial can be found here:

http://littlepathfinder.blogspot.com/2010/09/diy-escort-cards-lighthearted-tutorial.html

Just as a reminder, for this part you will need (and I'm quoting here):

1) Pencil with eraser (I happened to have a fancy-shmancy mechanical [which has the added benefit of a nice 'gentle' eraser; VERY important that the eraser be clean, and easy on the paper], but as long as it's got both a point and an eraser, you're good)
2) Micron Pen (I'm using .25mm line width - for what I was drawing, this seemed to work best)
3) Permanent Markers (Again, what you need will really depend on what you are drawing. For my black I used a fine point Bic Mark It, and for the colors I used both Sharpie and Bic Mark Its, depending on what was available)
4) A good pair of Scissors
5) *OPTIONAL, but RECOMMENDED* A good sense of humor. If you're undertaking this particular task, there's probably something a little kooky about you anyway, but hey! You're about to sit down and draw who-knows-how-many little dinky place cards for people, and they probably wont even look twice at them. Remember this on hour three of repetitive lines, come up with some ludicrous remark, and keep on truckin'! :D

Now, ignoring the poor photo quality of the images found here, we're going to assume that you've printed up those glorious escort cards on the Card Stock Paper that you purchased, and it has left you something that looks about like this:



Take those scissors and cut your cards out - you should be left with something like so:



Then, verrrrrrry carefully fold it in half...



Very good! See, if you believe in yourself, amazing things are possible. ;) Now, grab your pencil and start lightly outlining whatever design you're going to put on the card. I went with feathers, since that's the theme for all of the escort cards - the ones for the Bride&Groom (that you're seeing here) are a little more involved than the others, but it's the same basic process. When you're done sketching, put down the pencil and look at the card.



If it looks the way you want it to, pick up the Micron Pen and start the outlining process (any thin black pen will work, but I HIGHLY recommend picking up a Micron; not only does it come in a variety of widths, but it works well on the paper and will save you a ton of time without having to worry about any inking problems that come from using a generic sort of pen). I personally also colored in any of the little detail areas with the micron pen, to avoid any potential fudge-ups or bleeding issues with the wider tip of the permanent marker.



Now, if you are using the same color for inking that you are for outlining, do yourself a favor and use a test sheet to make sure that your inks are compatible before you start coloring everything in - the last thing you want is for the marker to dry and have it be an obviously lighter or darker color than the supposedly 'same' color ink you used for the detail areas. Taking a few moments to do a test run will save you hours later if there's any noticeable difference by allowing you to see BEFORE you color in all of your cards. Assuming that you've done this test and everything looks good, after you're done drawing in the details, take your permanent marker and fill in the 'larger' inking portions.



Add any final details, and voila! You're done! :D

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Note!

I will be completing the tutorial on escort cards as soon as the computer I am printing them from is up and running and available again. >.<

Also, for those of you interested in following my strictly herpetological adventures, check out my other blog:

http://ratsinthefreezer.blogspot.com

Saturday, September 18, 2010

DIY Escort Cards: A lighthearted Tutorial, Part One

What the heck is an Escort Card?

It's that little paper doohickey that you set out for people so that they know where they're sitting.

Awesome! So this will tell me exactly how to do that, right?

Well, this will tell you one way to do that. My wedding is going to have a buffet, so I didn't worry about including anything more than their name and table number, and I went with making the foldable ones that look like little tents. So, if you follow this recipe without ANY modifications, you'll end up with a tented escort card, that has the person's name and table number on it.

Ready?

Excellent, let's begin with the technological part - that thing you do on the computer.

You will need:

For the computer portion:

1) Cardstock Paper
2) A printer that will print on Cardstock Paper (the first one I tried wouldn't - it was a little too thick)
3) MS Word, and a basic working knowledge of it (I'm using the 2010 Student/Home version - if you're using a different version, you'll have to figure the tables out for yourself)

For later:

4) Pencil with eraser (I happened to have a fancy-shmancy mechanical [which has the added benefit of a nice 'gentle' eraser; VERY important that the eraser be clean, and easy on the paper], but as long as it's got both a point and an eraser, you're good)
5) Micron Pen (I'm using .25mm line width - for what I was drawing, this seemed to work best)
6) Permanent Markers (Again, what you need will really depend on what you are drawing. For my black I used a fine point Bic Mark It, and for the colors I used both Sharpie and Bic Mark Its, depending on what was available)
7) A good pair of Scissors
8) *OPTIONAL, but RECOMMENDED* A good sense of humor. If you're undertaking this particular task, there's probably something a little kooky about you anyway, but hey! You're about to sit down and draw who-knows-how-many little dinky place cards for people, and they probably wont even look twice at them. Remember this on hour three of repetitive lines, come up with some ludicrous remark, and keep on truckin'! :D

Alright, let's begin. First, open up a blank document in MSWord. Because of the layout that I've chosen for my escort cards, which is wider and shorter (for pretty obvious stability reasoning), I'm going to go up to Layout and change the Orientation to Landscape.


Then I went and removed the margins (I'm not posting a picture of that, you can't read it anyway when its compressed to fit here), but you go to Page Layout > Margins > Custom Margins, then change Top/Bottom/Left/Right to zero inches, then hit "Okay".

You now have the basic page to start with. HOORAY!!! Pat yourself on the back. ;)

Next, decide approximately what size you want your escort cards to be. If it helps, take a piece of regular printer paper, put it on the table in the 'Landscape' position as seen above, and fold it to about the size you want - this should give you an idea how many columns you're going to have when you go to make the table (more on that later). Me personally, I went with the "What's it look like if I just fold it in thirds?" approach, (which gave me a width of approximately 3.67" per card-looked good to me!), and thus when we make the table later, it'll be 3 columns wide.

Then, you've gotta decide how tall you want them to be; remember, this is a tented card, so you're going to need double the space that you would for a flat card (ie: if you want a 2" tall card, you'll need 4", 2" for the front, 2" for the back). Again, I went with the "Huh, what's easily divisable into this size paper, remembering that I need both a front and back for my card?" and (with all of my mathematical genius) came up with 4. Okay, four divides into 8.5 and it comes out to... um... well... This gave me something just over 2" tall- looked fine to me, and it made it pretty easy.

I promise this will get less confusing later.

With me so far? Pick your approximate width and height, and - my personal recommendation here - be nice to yourself, so that you're not futzing with an extra .0976" that you can't figure out where it came from/where it went.

Okay?

ONWARD!

Go back to your document, Insert > Table > Insert Table.

HAH! Here's where those numbers come in. See that spot that says, "Number of Columns"? That means "How many wide do you want it?" I go back, see that I folded my paper in thirds, and enter the number "3" here.

Then, I go to the place that says, "Number of Rows", and I enter the number "4". But WAIT!!! THIS DOES NOT MEAN THAT I WILL FIT A NAME IN EACH OF THOSE ROWS! It's okay, take a deep breath. This means that - vertically - there will be TWO place cards per sheet. There are four rows because you need a front and back for each card. Bear with me here, I know it's hard. ;)

Then, BEFORE I HIT "okay", I click "AutoFit to Window". THEN I hit "okay".

This should bring up a table that leaves you going, "WTF IS THAT?" It's okay - it should look something like this:


Now, click on one of the boxes in the table, and put your mouse over it. This should bring up the image of a little square down by the lowest, right hand corner of the table.

Click that little gray square, and drag it all the way to the bottom of the document. This should stretch your table to the size of the paper, like such:


Okay, the hardest part is over. Now, LEAVE YOUR TOP ROW BLANK! Go down to the second row. Pick your font (I used "Baroque Script"), your positioning (I centered it&set it a few lines down from the top of the box), and start typing!

I shrunk it down so no creepers can read the names on mine via the internet (I don't know why they would, but hey, they're creepers), but basically, this is what the page should look like once you've got the information entered:


Once you have the first page done, you can either start all over on a new page, or do what I did - select the entire thing, hit "ctrl+c", then paste it and just replace the names.

For whatever reason, I had compatibility issues with the font that I selected (user error I'm sure), so what I had to do to print them was first save them as .doc, then save it as a .pdf - I did this by going to File > Save&Send > Create PDF/XPS Document. Then I printed up the .pdf and used that as my blank.

Print that up, and come back here when you're ready for drawin'!

Saturday, September 11, 2010

More Later

Well, after 8 trips and two sets of proofs, the programs still have a minor glitch (they don't match the final proof, which leads us to believe that there is some sort of communication error between their computer and their printer or something) - except that they used up all my paper printing them up, and as such, these are the programs I'll be working with. I was too tired to argue when I picked them up, so W called them as soon as I got back to the house; they agreed to give me a full refund, so I'm only out the cost of the paper - I'd rather get that back too, but there isn't much they can do about it, since that was purchased through a third party (http://www.paperandmore.com - awesome deals on great paper, by the way).

Moving on.

Got those all completed and tied together and made pretty-pretty with the help of some very useful friends on Thursday night - 150 programs, all told. I'm really happy with the way they came out. Thanks guys! :D

W and I also completed our home made 'cake topper' - I'm not sure we're actually going to put it on the top of the cake, but if nothing else, we can have it sitting near us at the head table while we eat. Who knows. It was fun if nothing else.

In addition to the programs on Thursday night, my very-useful-friends assisted me in an emergency (voluntary/precautionary) evacuation of W and my new house. There was an enormous explosion only a few blocks away; homes were obliterated, lives were lost, and the area made international news. We are beyond grateful that our lives were not more dramatically impacted than an evening of disruption, fear, and uncertainty.

For me, the evening brought back flashes of a near-miss from my college years; an incident from which myself and three friends walked away only by some unattributed grace of the universe. For W, it spurred a reliving of his involvement with 9/11 - he was there when the planes struck; the smoke, the fire, the planes, the sirens, and having it happen as close to the date as it did...

W, B, W's dog, B's bird, and our friend Greg (who lives nearby) all ended up with me at my mom and dad's house for the evening.

Monday, September 6, 2010

Let's try this again...

Today, I would like to give an internet-worthy thank you to Gus, at FedEx Office, for his incredible patience and assistance as I attempted to get my programs printed up.

I originally thought that this would be a relatively simple endeavor; copy the file to a memory stick, take it in, and have them print it up. Long story short, first I forgot the card stock that I am having them cut and punch for the back, then I forgot the paper that I wanted them to use to print the programs on, then (for whatever reason) their MS Word was having compatibility issues with the font that I used, then we couldn't figure out how to save as a .PDF on my version of Word (it's different than theirs, and we did get it figured out), then we got it all printed up for the proof and I found a typo on my part, then we couldn't edit the .PDF that they had and of course this time I had left my computer at the house, and now... did I say long story short? My mistake. ;)

At the moment, we are waiting for them to complete the second proof, so that we can go check it out, and (hopefully, with a little luck) okay it for the rest of the productions.

That will have been six individual trips to and from FedEx Office since 1030 this morning.

I'm glad I bought extra paper.

Also, some random thoughts/advice about weddings:

1) I suggest that you choose a Maid/Matron of Honor that has either acted as MOH before, or been married. I know that mine has pulled my butt out of the fire on more than one occasion due to her previous experience, and, being that she's been married&knows how much goes into a wedding, she's also aware of just how much insanity is going on over at my end.

2) I also suggest that you decide what kind of wedding you want to have before you pick the date to have it. Although there have definitely been some exacerbating factors in our particular circumstance (unexpected move, for one), I think that picking the type of wedding and then looking at how much time it'd take us to put it together would probably have been a good idea.

3) When it comes to getting things done, underestimate yourself. Early on in planning, it can be tempting to take on a lot of things that - as the wedding date approaches - you wish you had left yourself more time for. Assume that whatever you need to get done will take roughly 3.5x longer to get it done than you think. (This also allows for things like having to spend an entire day running back and forth to FedEx without causing undue stress.)

4) RSVP's will surprise you; whether it's someone being completely unreachable about whether they're going to show, or having 95% of your guest list say 'Yes! I'll be there!' (both of which occurred for us), just know that you're probably going to be surprised by people.

5a) Know that everything wedding related is going to be ridiculously more expensive than you thought it was going to be. Look around for deals (amazon.com has some real steals, and vistaprint.com does as well), or expect to get hosed, or both.

5b) Lowball your budget. W and I set our 'budget' for the wedding nice and low, and that way, when we blew it in the stuff we weren't expecting, we didn't have a frickin' coronary. For example - when I was looking at gifts for the wedding party, I forgot that I'd also need to purchase wrapping paper and tissue paper and thank-you cards. Or how about the programs? Paper costs, backing costs, ribbon costs, printing costs, cutting costs, collating costs, drilling costs, plus tax. Gifts for the guests? Oh man, those went up in price since I looked at them last week! You get the idea...

6) On the topic of gifts for guests: My number one eye-rolling moment at most weddings is when the gift is something like a picture frame that has the bride&groom's name or wedding date on it. Or a champagne flute with their names, or... well, pretty much anything with their names on it. It's an awesome thought, and I get the idea (I'm supposed to think about you guys every time I use it, right?) - and know that if it has your name on it, I'm highly unlikely to use it. If I am a guest at your wedding, give me something themed (W and I are having a traditional Native American ceremony, we're giving out dream catchers) or practical (I just went to an outdoor wedding where they had fans on each person's seat), or both.

I think that's enough for now. More later.

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

More DIY

The 'finished' (outside is done) product from yesterday, as I decided to do it:Didn't want it to be too flashy or distracting, since the bridesmaids and groomsmen will be holding them while they stand up at the front with us, but also didn't want it to be too 'plain' looking either. W and I also sat down and rolled about 150 place setting yesterday - tying in the four sacred colors a little further, and making the plastic silverware look a little more 'formal'. W was having a little trouble with the DIY part. We have two separate sets of colors for the wedding - turquoise, lavender, and black for the people in the ceremony, and black, yellow, red, and white for the four sacred colors to bless those people. This has produced some interesting complexities in how to work it all in without everything becoming 'too much'. I have no idea whether it's going to work or not, but hey, we'll have given it our best!

39 days 'til go time.