Save the Date

With the wedding day quickly approaching, I decided it was time to get the invitations out the door. So, I mailed them a week ago. I waited a week to post about it because I wanted to make sure everyone had received them before I posted here and ruined the surprise.

Since we have a rock theme for our wedding, I used that as an inspiration for my invitations/save the dates. I made little keepsake "rock" magnets with our wedding date and location. I got the idea for how to do this from this website.

We found some nice clear round "rocks" at Michael's that worked perfectly for this project. First, I had to design what the image would look like that is seen through the rock. I wanted it to look like an actual rock, so I found a background design in a Google search that looked like dark stone. I then used Publisher to design it. Normally, I would use a much better program (like Photoshop) for designing purposes. But since this particular design was text and not really image heavy, I figured Publisher would be fine. Here's an image of the final design that was used on the clear rocks.

All I had to do was cut around the inside of the circle. Then the next step was gluing it to one side of the clear stone so that the image shows through the rock. To do this, I had to use a glue that would dry clear. Then after the glue had dried and the circle was permanently affixed to the clear stone, I sealed the back of the paper with a thin layer of glue. Then after that I had dried, I put a little dollop of glue on a round magnet and attached it to the back of the circle. Presto! A nice little keepsake our family can enjoy for years to come (assuming the glue holds out).


But I couldn't just give this magnet as the invitation. Since Cliff and I have chosen to have our wedding in a remote, private home location, I knew I needed to make directions for everyone. So, I guess I kind of did a traditional invitation to go along with the keepsake "Save the Date".

Hopefully, you can get the gist of the invitation without having to see all of the directions typed out. The private homeowners didn't have the directions readily available on the internet, so I am going to respect their privacy by not posting them here.

I don't know if it's obvious from the pattern, but I opted to do a gray stone background on the invitations (again, keeping with the theme). These are the size of postcards, so I purchased the perforated post card stock that will feed through any standard printer. These printed four to a page, so it was easy to just print, tear and mail.

Here's what the final postcard and rock magnet looked like.

The day after we mailed these out, Cliff's mom called to express her appreciation for the magnet. I knew taking the time and putting forth a little extra effort would be worth it.