STD's Follow-Up

Every responsible person knows that STDs require follow-up care-you can't let them just fester and not take care of them right? Well, my follow-up care is trying to get over the fact that no one has taken the time to acknowledge them. This makes for a very sad Fishie... 

I sent my cute little cards out into the world and granted I didn't expect flourishes of phone calls, texts, emails, or what have you but it would be nice to hear from someone that all my hard work was totally worth it.

In case you've forgotten, here's our lovely cards...
 

How could no one tell me how awesome they are? Not just that but how can I know if the ones we mailed made it to their intended targets? Grr...it's frustrating and kills my DIY buzz all in one shot!
Have you ever not gotten a response when you wanted one? Should I let this kill my buzz or just move on and keep on with all the projects I have planned?

Ode to the USPS

Blogger Note: I meant to write this post back when I mailed out our STDs but my bridal ADD kicked in and I got distracted.

Oh, United States Postal Service, you have become the bane of my existence. Why must you keep increasing rates and coming out with butt ugly stamps for me to put on my pretty Save The Date cards? Why must you have completely unreasonable office hours and no available parking spots that make it impossible for me to get there in time to buy the butt ugly stamps? 

Now, I'll admit it-I don't necessarily blame to post office for having to raise their rates. With email, facebook, texting, and what not the art of actually sending mail has gone by the wayside. But, that doesn't mean that I have to be saddled with butt ugly stamps.

I walked into the Post Office wanting this stamp. Pretty wedding cake stamp, perfect amount of postage for what I needed.  

Instead the post office wanted me to walk out with this stamp...

 Now, I'm not racist and it wasn't the fact that it was a black man on the stamp that made me not want it-it was the fact that it WASN'T the pretty wedding cake stamp that I wanted. I almost had a bridezilla moment and tried fighting with the poor postal worker over the stamp but instead I bit my tongue and tried to find a compromise...

The compromise was the pretty "Love" purple flowers that don't go with our theme but it's an envelope and most people are just going to throw it away anyway. We just have to add the ugly blue big horn sheep stamp and then it's enough postage to get our magnets out the door and on their way to the right people.

As for the crappy hours and parking spots? Yeah, ummm who the heck closes the post office at 4:30 in the afternoon? Not only that but if you walk through that door at 4:29 they're already closing up shop and won't even sell you stamps. Their parking lot was a one way and I couldn't figure out which was the "right" one way. 

Did you have problems with the USPS? What do you think of the compromise stamps? Should I have just sucked it up and put the ugly black man stamp on the envelope? Which reminds me, anyone know who that guy is? I know I could google it but I figure if someone else knows that'll save me some time.

Please Take This Magnet and Stick It....

To your fridge that is. 

I've completed my second attempt at wedding related DIY projects and I have to say they turned out fabulously! Not to toot my own horn but BEEP-BA-BEEP-BA-BEEP! They were fantastically easy in addition to being fantastically inexpensive.

Aren't they adorable? We couldn't decide on just one picture for our cards so we decided to have three different ones! As we told our guests, if they don't like the one they get then they can just trade with someone else-like Pokemon cards.

I know you're all DYING to know how I made these things, and although it felt like it sucked the life out of me making them it really only took about 8 or 9 hours total to make 40ish cards. It just felt like longer because it was a little boring watching the Cricut cut, over and over again.

Watching Jeff Dunham's Christmas special made the Cricut cutting a little more bearable.

 Fishie Kitty supervised from his perch over by the Christmas tree that we'd just put up, which also makes the BEST kitty toy EVER!...
















 
and FI Fishie vacuumed the apartment, or at least he pretended to.

Meanwhile I ran 45 photos through the Xyron machine to make them into magnets. Which, by the way, is easier said then done-you have to give enough space in between the photos otherwise you wind up with one photo on top of another and then you have to throw both photos out...not that it happened to me or anything, I've just heard it happens to other people-sometimes.
 



After I'd run about a million of them through the xyron machine and wound up with a nice little pile of magnets on the floor...









 It was time to cut them out...I tried using my straight paper cutter first but soon found that the rotary cutter I use for quilting worked MUCH better...

Even FI Fishie decided to help out, after his "vacuuming" of course.

Next it was time to babysit the Cricut and let it do it's thing...although it was boring sitting there watching it cut, I've gotten enough compliments on the cards that it was completely worth it.

 Being the indecisive bride that I am I couldn't decide on one photo or one color so we wound up using 3 different pictures with 4 different colors on the front...making for 12 different combinations.







 Another overlooked detail was the cute little polka dot edge that I meticulously hand punched out with a cute little punch I found at Michael's for 40% off.









We'd budgeted $200 for these cards and by mostly using supplies I already had on hand (xyron machine, hole punch, etc.) I was able to complete the project for a little over $100. The most expensive thing I bought was the refills for my Xyron Machine which were normally priced for $34.99 and I bought all of them on sale for 40% off.

Xyron Magnet Refills	$89.65
Cardstock	$3.98
White Cards	$5.99
Photos	$8.55
Total:	$108.16

Did I make this project harder then it needed to be? Should I have just stuck with 1 photo and 1 color? 

DIY Project Number Two...

Now that I've got one project under my belt I'm ready to begin tackling the million other ones I have left. First up...our Save The Date magnets.

We're going to keep this project super simple, have the picture printed at Wal-Mart's photo center run them through the Xyron machine to get the front side laminated and the back side gets the magnet. Easy peezy lemon squeezy.

Take a look at what I've managed to come up with using this wonderful free software called Photoscape and the way I look at it, it's like Photoshop for poor people.

What do you think? Are any of these good enough to be printed or should I just go back to the drawing board and come up with something else?