As I mentioned in my post about new year’s resolutions, I really enjoyed making our elopement announcements! Whenever we travel somewhere new, I always buy two postcards. Two, because it’s hard to pick just one and they’re the cheapest souvenirs around so I can justify it. I figure there’ll be more than one way I’ll want to commemorate all these good times.

When we decided that we were going to elope to the palm desert in California, I thought it’d be super cool to keep it a secret then make an announcement after-the-fact by sending out “postcards” to our family. I cringed at the thought of my nearest and dearest learning about the elopement via Facebook. (If you hadn’t been on my received texts on the phone I’ve had for the last year, I didn’t ask for your address, and Facebook’s how you found out, Sorry! Let’s keep in better touch!)

After searching Etsy high and low for what I had dreamed up, I wasn’t finding any luck. But what I did find was this snazzy little POST CARD stamp at The Paper Source. HELLO, INSPIRATION.

I snatched it up and a few other things to make rough drafts prior to the wedding…then I got the first picture from our photographer, of us running into the desert to elope, and I may have gone a little overboard. This wasn’t fully realized until I was making what seemed like a zillion of them, of course.

I decided it needed real vintage stamps. And a personalized address label stamp. Envelope inserts. Typed fresh from my typewriter addresses. Embossing, lots of embossing. And squiggle scissors, of course. Because real vintage postcards were squiggly.

I know, I know. I might’ve gone a little Veruca Salt.

Apparently, I’m pretty detail oriented. Do you see why I chose to elope? A wedding was more than I could handle!

The fastest turnaround time I found for a custom stamp was on rubberstamps.net. I used Photoshop to make a design out of some cool fonts and downloaded it as an art stamp. It was SO cheap that it was NBD getting expedited shipping. Except I got the wrong size, so I did that process twice 😉

(Sorry not sorry, you can’t see the whole thing with my address!

I used InDesign along with some vintage postcard research to add a few Postcard-like elements to it, typed a loving explanation,  and worked hard again and again until they were all done!

I’m so proud of the results, and once I had a friend along the process was so much fun. I can’t wait to send more letters in 2015!