Magnet holders

Revisiting magnet holders with this post.

This is one of the sections on the website that is being worked on right now. Pricing is now available for more card stock colors- such as cream, yellow, and red. Even better, pricing is now a little lower.

These magnet holders are 5.5x4.25 inch cards. There are two slits, positioned to hold small magnets. Small magnets are 3.5x2 inches- the typical size of a business card.

Visit the magnet holder page to learn more

*Pricing for folded magnet holders is not available yet, as of December 30th, only flat blank and flat printed.*

These holders were developed primarily because the smallest envelope size that you can mail out is over twice as big as the small magnet size. This is why that product is priced out with envelopes- it's expected that you are getting them so that you can mail out your magnet.

Other magnet sizes, such as the 5.5x4.25 and 4x3.5 inch magnet sizes, are the perfect size to mail out on there own, closely matching a common mailable envelope size.

The 4.1x2.6 and 2x5.5 inch magnets do not closely match an envelope size, but customers usually mail them on out in envelopes that are just a bit larger. On the other hand, sometimes a customer just does not want their 2x5.5 inch magnet bouncing around in a 3.5x6 inch envelope. Slitted cards are actually available for these magnet sizes- but they definitely cost more.

Check out this example of a printed 3.7x8.5 inch slitted card for the 2x5.5 inch magnet size:



If you are interested in a magnet holder for another magnet size, let me know what card stock you would like to go with, what magnet size you need it for, and, whether you want any printing on the card.

Important note for December and January

Orders of 4x3.5 inch magnets that are placed during the first week and a half of January, will have an additional week added to their production time.

Orders of all other custom printed products will have an additional 1.5-2 weeks added to the production time if the order is placed during the last week and a half of December. If the order is placed during the first week of January, there will only be 1 additional week.

Orders of some blank products- such as most card magnet holders and/or envelopes, will have an added 1-1.5 weeks when placed 2 days prior to the end of December, or, during the first week of January.

Typical production times, for almost any product, are about two weeks.

As always, for custom printed products, a design must be finalized via email prior to placing an order. Emails will be answered as usual until January. During the first week and a half of January, response times to emails will be notably delayed.

What does all this mean for your order?

If you would like to receive your order of a custom printed product near the end of December and/or beginning of January, you should place your order by December 15th. Otherwise, you may not receive your order until near the mid-to-late January.

The exception is 4x3.5 inch magnets. Delivery times will only be affected for these magnet orders when they are placed during the first week and a half of January.

Playing Card Invitations

Something I'm seeing more of: invitations for weddings, and other parties, that incorporate a playing card theme.



With a design that might remind you of a playing card, these invitations might work for couples getting married in a Casino, in Vegas, or who like to gamble, or for those fun pre-wedding parties.

The two featured invitations are both examples of how this can be done with a simple, cost effective design. Both are made of white card stock, and have rounded corners.

Tis the season

To order Christmas cards, season's greetings, and save the date magnets to send out with your holiday mailings.

I recommend that customers place their no later than December 3rd.

This means that customers should get started on their design with me no later than by November 25th.

As always, you can get custom and personalized designs, with or without photographs, for magnets, cards, postcards, and more.

If you are ordering 5.5x4.25 inch magnets, flat cards, or folded cards, switch from white envelopes to blue envelopes for no additional cost. (For those orders placed prior to December 1st).

http://savethedateoriginals.com/Winter.php

Taking care of business(es) part3

Business spotlight 3: K.C.Frick photography.

Kelly is a journalistic photographer in the Saint Augustine, Fl area, specializing in engagements/couples, families/children and small weddings.

I've worked with Kelly a few times now on various projects. One of the products she orders is not even advertised on the website- printed CD covers.

Check here out at her website: http://www.kcfrickphotography.com/

Taking care of business(es) part2

Business spotlight 2: Defense Works.

STDO offers a variety of design services. From logos to website banners, from brochures to signs, from business cards to... e-book covers.

Wesley Manko is a Certified Systema Instructor. Through his business, Defense Works, he offers seminars, classes, and e-books.

Visit his website http://defenseworks.us/ for a free Campus safety report download, or check out his Practical Self-Defense Strategies for Women.

Taking care of business(es) part1

It's inevitable that a graphic designer ends up delving into a variety of projects. While STDO does tend to focus on weddings, I am also available for commercial work.

Spotlight 1: http://www.ourbeautifulbirth.com/

Beautiful Beginnings is run by Tracy P. She offers natural childbirth education and certified Bradley doula services for Broward, Miami-Dade, and Palm Beach counties. Tracy had a great idea for her logo, two large hearts and a smaller heart inside the mother heart.

If you live in Florida and are looking for an experienced doula, check out Tracy's website.

The October Sale

October's deal of the month is a set of:

1) A white 5.5x4.25 inch card with a polka dot strip
2) A white envelope
3) A printed sticker to match the polka dot strip



The wording and font can be changed to accommodate any event, along with the strip's color.

This offer will be available until October 31st.

Folded Birthday Cards

For this project, one of my customers had a fun idea.

Have you ever heard of the Shel Silverstein? Among other things, he wrote Children books, such as "Where the Sidewalk Ends".

For my customer's son's birthday, she wanted a custom birthday card that was unique. The first part of her idea was to put a poem on the front of the card. The front of the card is simple, set up the same way a "Shel Silverstein" book might be.




A nice simple design... But that isn't all! The inside is a riot of colorful balloons with the birthday message:



Check out what this customer has to say about her order:

"Ordering custom invitations from STDO was the best decision I've made in planning my son's birthday party. Angela was able to provide several proofs for my ideas almost immediately, and was very responsive to requests to change or tweak details of the design. Her communication with me during the process was prompt and informative, and above all, I am absolutely delighted with the quality of the finished product. I have gotten many compliments on them and will definitely be a repeat customer. Thank you, Angela!"

Save the Date: With Humor

Humorous and funny save the dates are always appreciated guests.

Check out this 4.1x2.6 inch design that features toilets. Yes, toilets.



This size is available as either a magnet or a card

Photostrip save the dates

One of the fun ideas that floats around for wedding save the dates is:

A strip of photographs. It reminds couples of when they hopped into a photo booth and made faces at the camera- goofing around and having fun.

Often people will want to hold up signs with "save" "the" "date" for their photographs. Sometimes this works well, but sometimes, I recommend that the couple have to re-write the words so that they come through nice and clear.

There are a couple of magnet sizes that kind of work for this idea: 2x5.5 and 2x8 inches.

There is a card size that works even better with this idea though- 2.75x8 inches. There is enough room for a nice border around the photographs and some wording in a fun font.

Minimum order quantity for this card size: 75.

Click here to visit the information page for this card size.

This size is not available as a magnet.


Check out what this customer had to say about her order:

"Hi Angie. I received the save the dates a couple of days ago. They are perfect! Thanks for all of your help!"

Save the Date: The equation

Below is a wedding save the date design that features... what looks like a math equation.



Quirky, fun, and for the math nerds who are getting hitched.

Even if your guests have not suffered through a math or physics class lately, they will get the gist of what it going on.

This is designed for a 2x5.5 inch magnet or card.

A fun thank you card set

This is an example of a thank you card. This is folded card, made of white card stock. The butterfly graphic is in a lighter green, as is the name down near the bottom left.

You you can see, this card with combined with green envelopes. While colored envelopes are a little more expensive, they really made a your thank you card stand out from regular mail.

Save the Date: Gamers.

Sometimes, when one geek meets another geek...

There is one small save the date magnet design on the STDO website that pays homage to the gamer spirit:

This small magnet design features gaming dice. A fun change of wording that one couple went with was: "We failed our love save".


And then there is this wedding save the date, designed to look somewhat like a "Magic: the gathering" card.  It is a fun 2.5x4 inch magnet design that incorporates a photograph of the couple along with the geekitude.

Also, here is a larger 3.5x5 Super save the date magnet idea:

Send in your suggestions for geeky, nerdy, or fun save the dates!

A WOW (world of warcraft) design may show up in the future. For the alliance!


See more geeky save the dates in the OffBeat section at Save the Date Originals.

Nice bridal shower invitation

This bridal shower invitation is the newest addition to the "simple cards" section. This section focuses on black ink only designs. The example below is this design printed on a raspberry colored card stock.




The wording could of course be modified to reflect a save the date, birthday, or other type of invitation.

September's Sale

September's sale is this 4x3.5 inch save the date magnet design:



http://savethedateoriginals.com/SeptemberSteal.html

Poker Chip Cards

A customer of mine, who is getting married in Las Vegas, had the idea to make their save the date announcement look somewhat like a poker chip. This meant we would surely need something circular.

Available are circular cards or circular magnets, 4 inches in diameter. The minimum order of magnets is 100; The minimum for cards is 20.

Check out her design:



If you went with a card instead of a magnet, you would have a white back, with a printed front.

This design idea can easily be modified a bit for another wedding related event- such as a bachelor party- or just a personal casino themed party invitation.




If mailing these out alone, you would probably want to go with a 5.7x4.35 inch envelope. It's a common size, and thus less expensive than other envelope sizes.

Keeping it Simple

Sometimes, a person just wants something simple and elegant.

Below is an example of a personalized note card. This is a pale pink folded card, with a last name printed on the front in black ink. Approximately 5.5x4.25 inches.




This card is good for a variety of purposes- a handwritten save the date, a handwritten thank you, and other personal correspondence.

Going with a pale pink instead of white says "hey, something a little different here" without detracting from the elegant font style.

Boarding Pass Save the Dates

In a follow up to an earlier post with an example of a boarding pass, here is another example boarding pass save the date for you to take a look at. This new version of the design is longer, and features an airplane instead of a cruise boat.



This example is printed on white card stock, and is about 4x8.5 inches. This boarding pass also features the rounded corners, and the actual tear off section. Instead of orange and pink, this time we have yellow and blue as the main colors.

As usual, if you are interested in this boarding pass idea, but want to work out an alternate design with me, shoot me an email. See contact page.

Addendum: I have been asked whether this boarding pass save the date design could be printed on a magnet. The answer: A similar design could be created for a 4x7 inch magnet. This magnet size has rounded corners, but note that a magnet will not have a tear off section.

Save the Date Sports Ticket Design

...post the third. People have so much fun with the sports ticket look-a-like save the dates, that it warrants yet another post.

Click here to read an earlier more detailed post on this subject.

This post is just to show off a slightly altered version of this design idea. This time, instead of a 2x5.5 inch design, we have a 4.1x2.6 inch design. This design features a clash of teams!





This new size is also available as either a magnet or a card, and costs the same as a 2x5.5 inch magnet or card. The best envelope size for these is 3.5x5 inches.

For the love of the pocketfold

Having run a wedding stationery business for the last several years, there is something I've noticed about pocketfold invitations.

Many couples love them. And, many couples are also surprised at how much they cost after inquiring about them.

Why do they cost so much more than other invitations?

Consider your basic invitation. A flat 5x7 inch card, with an additional rsvp card. This combination can be done in less than $1 if you go with a fairly simple design. A "simple design" might be white card stock, a small graphic (like hearts, or a fleur-de-lis), and your wording/text.

In contrast, a pocketfold invitation...
1) You add the pocketfold itself, which immediately hikes up the price a quite a bit.
2) You don't just have the invitation and the rsvp cards anymore- typically, 2 more cards are added, as shown below.
3) The invitation also now requires assembly- attaching the main card to the pocketfold.

So now you have an invitation with 2 additional cards, folding, a pocket, and layered assembly.

That isn't all.

4) Often, people love the look of an additional layer behind the main invitation card. This can be any sort of patterned or textured paper, or just a solid color.
5) People also then will often go with some sort of sticker to hold the pocketfold closed. The sticker itself varies in size, shape, type (white matte, white gloss, or see-through), and printed design.



Is that all? Not really! By the time you go through all the possible options in the color and texture of pocketfold, color and texture of the envelopes, color and texture of the inserts, and, all the possible variation of the actual printed design... you are looking at highly personalized and unique wedding invitations. You can end up with many beautiful but costly combinations.

When people ask for quotes, it often does take a few questions to figure out their likely combination. Of course, quantity also factors in- these invitations, like any other, cost less per piece at higher quantities than at lower quantities.

If you are considering pocketfold invitations, know that they will typically cost 2.5-4 times as much as a simple 2 card invitation set.

Sometimes, my customers try to do some of the work themselves to reduce cost. This might be buying just the design print files from me. They might buy only the cards/inserts, and making their own pocketfolds. Instead, they might buy the pocketfold and make their own inserts. They might even buy the whole set from me, but attach the main invitation card to the pocketfold themselves.

A good way to reduce the cold of your pocketfold, if you are ordering the whole set, is just to go with a simple text design, and white card stock for the cards. You end up with a classic look, the uniqueness of the pocketfold, and less printing costs.

Silver Bordered Menues

A customer was recently referred to me, who already had her program design in mind. She wanted a tea-length card with some sort of silver border.

It's always nice to work with customers who know just what they want. To the left is her design.

Metallic borders are invariably eye catching. I also don't really advertise any products with metallic inks or borders on the website.

Achieving a metallic print does actually require a specialized process. In the future, I will probably offer some products with metallic borders, but will not offer personalized wording and/or graphics in metallics.

Rose themed invitations- with a tear off rsvp card

This invitation is not your typical 5x7 inch flat card.



A customer of mine had this idea after looking at an earlier post regarding a couple of trifold invitations I had worked on.

This is a tri-folding card that measures 5x5 inches when folded. The right panel is about 3.5x5 inches, the perfect size for an rsvp card. With a perforated fold, your guests can tear this off and mail you your rsvp card in the accompanying rsvp envelopes. White 5.25x5.25 inch envelopes accompany the invitations.



Notes: This example is made of white card stock, and includes white envelopes. Shown sealed with a 1 inch circular sticker.

Don't forget though, that square envelopes cost a little more to mail out with the USPS post office than rectangular envelopes do. The rsvp card is not square, but the folded invitation is.

New designs

The best part of offering custom design work and personalization- continually discovering new design layouts, be they fun, elegant, colorful, or classic.

New designs are added every now and again; Check out these featured new designs in 4 magnet sections:

Small save the date magnet:

"Silhouette" (MH65)

Large save the date magnet:

"Concert" (StD80)

4x3.5 inch save the date magnets:

"Dawn" (MR32)

4.1x2.6 inch save the date magnets:

"Autumn" (MS37)

There are only about 2 weeks left to get free sample magnets to check out my most popular sizes. To do so, visit this page.

Small Additions

In addition to the "share this website on facebook", additional links to share the website on myspace and twitter are now available on the front page of www.savethedateoriginals.com

In the works: functionality to send an email to yourself or a friend straight from the STDO website while you are looking at a design/webpage. This will eliminate the need to go to another website, and login to your email account, before sending your message.

Feel free to suggest more features that you would like to see added.

Last Summer Sale

The last summer sale is posted here.

This sale is: $10 off heart shaped magnets.

These fun heart shaped magnets could be used for thank you and/or favor magnets. These magnets could be used for wedding and other event save the dates. They could be used for businesses as advertisements.

As with all products, most custom design work is included in this pricing. You decide on colors, wording, fonts, photographs, and themes. Proofs of designs are emailed prior to your placing an order. If you would like to get me started on a custom design for you, contact me.

The trifold wedding invitation

An invitation set-up I have not yet posted about: trifolds.

The most popular invitation set up is a flat 5x7 inch card, with an smaller rsvp card, and extra then sometimes more cards to include maps, directions, reception information, and more.

In the case of a trifold invitation, you can have some of this extra information -maps, directions, and such- printed on the fold(s), though of course the rsvp card is still separate. Below are two examples.

The first example is a card that is about 5x10 inches when unfolded, 5x7 when folded. The main panel is 5x7 inches, with two panels on each side that are approximately 2.5x7 inches. A barn door photograph is printed on the outside of the invitation.




The second example is a card that is also about 5x10 inches when unfolded, 5x7 inches when folded. The main panel is also 5x7 inches. In this case, however, you have a 1.5x7 inch fold on the left, and a 3.5x7 inch panel on the right. The outside is printed with stripes and stylized flowers. This example is made of cream card stock.



Trifold invitations need to be held closed. The easiest way to do that is just to use a small sticker. You can of course use various sizes of stickers. You could also work on a DIY project, closing the invitations with ribbons or bows or whatever else you could think of.

As with all invitations, if you have me design a tri-fold invitation for you, you can change things up a bit. The customer who ordered the barn door invitations went with brown envelopes, for example, instead of white envelopes. Different card stock colors... different designs... different fonts... different colors...

Trifold invitations will cost you more than flat, non-folding invitations. They would cost less than a pocketfold, however, and certainly cost less to mail out than a pocketfold invitation would.

October 9th, 2012 UPDATE:

Check out an updated photograph of the barndoor invitation idea:

This invitation idea has been fairly popular, and now has a listing on the website:
http://www.savethedateoriginals.com/details/invitations/INV3FLD1.php

Save the Date tickets

Tickets look-a-likes are a popular idea for wedding save the dates. One ticket design in particular that people enjoy- sports like designs.

In an earlier post about a sports ticket save the date, I featured a 2.5x6.25 inch ticket that someone had me design. This particular ticket was made out of a skinnier flyer type paper. Since then, it's been more popular to get the ticket design printed on a thicker card or even a magnet, both of which are more cost effective at the smaller 2x5.5 inch size. With wedding save the dates, people often want to stick to simple short lines of text, so this smaller size works. People who want a similar design for something else- like a rehearsal dinner invitation- need to go with a bit of a larger card (2.75x8.5 is a good size),

As with all designs on the website, customers can ask for customization; Photograph, no photograph, wording, colors, etc. One thing that usually needs to stay the same, though, is the font style. There are only a small number of fonts that will work in the small available space.


Here are a couple of design examples on the website:




Whether going with a 2x5.5 inch magnet or card, if customers want to mail the save the date ticket out alone, I recommend the 3.5x6 inch envelope size. I do offer white envelopes of that size.

Visit my website: save the date originals

Invitations: color card stock

This is a good example of a simple black ink design printed on a colored card stock. Instead of printing the background color- the card stock is raspberry pink. This way, you don't spend a ton of money on ink, but still get a nice look.

This example wedding invitation is 5x7 inches. The design is also actually loosely based on a save the date design from the website:



As you can see, the save the date's swirl surrounded oval is the main idea for the invitation design.

Another new invitation design

This is another invitation design that was mostly a customer's idea. For her save the date magnets, we ended up using a photograph of two daisies, persimmon and yellow, which she wanted to incorporate into her invitation design. Our end result is this invitation design with a persimmon border and the photograph of the daisies placed in the corners. This is a 5.5x8.5 inch invitation; The size allows for the incorporated flowers, the border, and the extra text she wanted to include

A free sample pack of printed magnets

After 5 years of business, customers have made it obvious which magnet sizes they love the most. Given the numbers of extra magnets I have left over from orders over the years, I am now offering a free pack of samples to interested customers for the most popular sizes. This free sample pack will be available now through August.

http://www.savethedateoriginals.com/FreeSamples.html

It's About Time

Considering that Save the Date Originals started out based solely on wedding save the dates, it's about time that I set up an informative central page for this on my website.

Check it out:
http://savethedateoriginals.com/SavetheDate.php

This page currently features 4 articles:
1) What save the dates are
2) What's popular these days
3) Some Q&A
4) Mailing out save the date magnets

Small magnet pricing

As of yesterday, the small (business card sized magnet) pricing was restructured a little bit.

This minimum quantity is now 75 for orders. Also, this magnet size can now be ordered in 25's below 200, and in 50's below 400.

Quantity & Price 75 for $40	Cost Per Magnet $.54	Shipping cost $5.05
100 for $50	$.50	$5.45
125 for $57	$.46	$5.65
150 for $62	$.42	$6.05
175 for $67	$.39	$6.45
200 for $72	$.36	$6.85
250 for $85	$.34	$7.20
300 for $100	$.33	$8
350 for $110	$.31	$8.50
400 for $120	$.29	$9
500 for $135	$.26	$10

See some save the date & other designs here:
http://savethedateoriginals.com/SmallDesigns.php

Read the general informational page about this magnet size here:
http://savethedateoriginals.com/SmallMagnetInformation.php

Winter holiday and Christmas themed save the dates

A popular winter themed small save the date design: The snowman and snow-woman.

I have decided to remove the winter/Christmas themed page on the website for now, and move these designs into their appropriate sections. These section includes not just wedding save the dates, but also same family oriented card and magnet designs.

In the future, each section (cards, magnets, by size) will have options to separate out designs by theme and design trends for viewing (such as, summer, winter, fall, calendar, flowers, butterflies, hearts, and more). Because so many of my designs could easily fall into multiple categories with just a small change (such as colors) this will not be a quick conversion. Thus, in the meantime, the Christmas/Winter theme designs will be merged back into the website.

Response cards

My invitation section still needs a lot of development. My focus still really is on save the dates- invitations are often created for customers who have previously ordered save the dates with me.

But I plan on getting back to work on the wedding invitation section within the next month. That development is going to focus on the main invitation card, and those designs. What additional cards people may need will vary, and be designed on a case by case basis.

RSVP cards are one thing that I do not spend any time creating a design archive of. When I am working out an invitation design with a couple, I just ask them about what they have in mind for their RSVP card, and design it to work with their invitation card.

Because most of the bride's and groom's I am working with don't really have a lot of experience with wedding invitations and rsvp cards and everything involved in wedding stationery, there is the occasional request for examples of what other couples have done. If you've never seen an RSVP card, how would you know what to put on them? Because of this, I have finally, gone through some of my recent folders to grab a few examples.

Your basic response card is typically going to include:
1) an RSVP-by date
2) a place for the guest, or the couple, to write the guest's name(s)
3) a line or box for people to check off whether they can or can not attend

Naturally, there are various ways to word that. Ever seen the "can attend with bells on"?

One thing you may see on a RSVP card that sometimes confuses people who have never been to a wedding is this:

M______________________________

The M is to cue (the guest) to write down "Mr. such and such" or "Mrs. such and such". This is an older idea, used to indicate that the bride and groom would like you to present your name formally.

These days couples will often just go with:

Name: ___________________________

It's also not uncommon to add in dinner selection options. And, a place for the couple, or the guest, to write in the number of people attending. (With so many couples paying for their own weddings, guest numbers are critical). Another thing I've seen, is a place for guests to mark off which event they are attending. Sometimes people want a count for the rehearsal dinner. Sometimes people are having two ceremonies or receptions, and are letting the guest choose which one they can/will attend.


Your RSVP card layout is also going to depend on the size of the card, the design, whether you are going with a double sided rsvp card, whether you are going with a rsvp post card, and of course, how much information you want to gather....



5x3.5 inch examples:










5.5x4.25 inch examples:








Examples of double sided rsvp cards and postcards: