It took me 9 months, but I finally got around to birth announcements for Atticus.I always imagined that I’d be right on top of that kind of thing, but in fairness, it did take him a while before he turned cute.
It didn’t seem right to me to send out announcements when things were still so scary. I needed to wait for the happy ending. And then the day to day work of achieving that happy ending made a project as big as 100 announcements seem absolutely out of the question. But I did it. Eventually.
Here’s the front of the card. I thought everyone in the world would recognize this quote, but apparently it only rings a bell to the 30 – 45 year old set. Here’s where it came from.
Then you open one end of the card and see the scary picture. Which is far less scary in black and white.
And the last page reveals the happy ending.
My dirty little secret is that all of my cards I make work out to be 4 1/4 x 5 1/2. Years ago I bought thousands of envelopes at that size for a business endeavor, and I’m still working my way through them. Since I wanted this card to trifold and still get to that size, I knew an average piece of paper would not cut it, so I went to neenah and ordered their free samples. This is a little insider trade secret I share with all of you. Just shop in their online store and you’ll discover that you can get up to 4 samples and only pay $12.95 shipping. If you buy any paper at all that price comes down. The samples vary in size, but you can find them as big as 12 1/2 x 19.
I looked all over town to find a printer who would work with my small quantities, and no one would give me the time of day, so I ended up at Kinko’s. Who printed it on the wrong printer, so all the toner kept rubbing off of the pictures. If anyone has any tips on finding a better printer to work with, I’d love some solutions. Kinko’s is convenient, but the quality is just not professional.