Wedding invite printing:

rfalias

Are there cheap places that will print say a couple hundred images of my own making on cardstock.

Doing wedding stuff and I've been working on invites and save the date cards, etc... to save money.
Is it worth it to do the design my self and have someone else print it? Are there online places I could just give them a PSD and have them print it out on 7x5 cardstock?

My image is (WIP, and obv. fake locations):

JebusUD

my friends did theirs on a printer themselves and it saved money actually. I think they printed 120 invites. Your design looks pretty simple so maybe you just want to do that.

Figgy

I'll second JebusUD and say to go buy a great big pack of heavy stock paper. You could save ink by buying a light pink colour and then "trial and error" colour correcting the deeper colour so that it still looks the same when it's printed.

You could then exacto them, or you could even take them to your local print shop and use their paper cutter (the kind with the big guillotine handle). I know Staples has a whole section set up for self-serve.

Sending it to a printer won't necessarily save you money versus having them done... by a printer. They don't charge anything for the designing, which is all you've done yourself. They charge you for the printing, which is what a printer will charge you.

For example, from Staples here, 200 colour copies of your design, 5x7 on 100lbs paper would cost upwards of $160.

Vivixenne

some of my friends recently saved money by doing all their invitations by hand

they printed them out on some good-quality heavy paper and then just glued simple little decor (a ribbon and some nice borders) onto the cards

the effect turned out quite nice... it's a lot of work but they saved a heap of money doing it

rfalias

I'll have to bring up the self printing...
Hmmmm... Would this work on a regular Crap Jet printer?

Zeon

Figgy wrote: »

I'll second JebusUD and say to go buy a great big pack of heavy stock paper. You could save ink by buying a light pink colour and then "trial and error" colour correcting the deeper colour so that it still looks the same when it's printed.

You could then exacto them, or you could even take them to your local print shop and use their paper cutter (the kind with the big guillotine handle). I know Staples has a whole section set up for self-serve.

Sending it to a printer won't necessarily save you money versus having them done... by a printer. They don't charge anything for the designing, which is all you've done yourself. They charge you for the printing, which is what a printer will charge you.

For example, from Staples here, 200 colour copies of your design, 5x7 on 100lbs paper would cost upwards of $160.

Mmm, thats not true, design is usually the most expensive part of the process unless you want something ridiculously generic from a template. Considering you only have 2 real colors there (a shade of red and black), you could probably get someone to do a spot print cheaper than 160 bucks. Check your local print shops, theyd be able to help you. After buying a decent printer, enough ink (Youre going to go through a lot of color carts printing something like that) and some nice paper, youre probably going to break even, or even spend more, and honestly end up with a crappier product in the end, versus paying a professional to do it.

I mean, if you plan on doing this a lot in the future, go for it i guess, itll be good practice, but if you just want some nice one off wedding invitations, get them professionally printed.

Oh and i know you said its a WIP, but a small suggestion, get rid of the 4 super squigly lines, they look like pubes.

Vivixenne

Zeon wrote: »

Oh and i know you said its a WIP, but a small suggestion, get rid of the 4 super squigly lines, they look like pubes.

Seconding this because I went back to check the picture after reading this and now I can't UNSEE them as pubes

Bionic Monkey

If you do send this to a professional printer, for the love of god, research how professional designers make crops and bleeds.

Figgy

Zeon wrote: »

Figgy wrote: »

I'll second JebusUD and say to go buy a great big pack of heavy stock paper. You could save ink by buying a light pink colour and then "trial and error" colour correcting the deeper colour so that it still looks the same when it's printed.

You could then exacto them, or you could even take them to your local print shop and use their paper cutter (the kind with the big guillotine handle). I know Staples has a whole section set up for self-serve.

Sending it to a printer won't necessarily save you money versus having them done... by a printer. They don't charge anything for the designing, which is all you've done yourself. They charge you for the printing, which is what a printer will charge you.

For example, from Staples here, 200 colour copies of your design, 5x7 on 100lbs paper would cost upwards of $160.

Mmm, thats not true, design is usually the most expensive part of the process unless you want something ridiculously generic from a template.

That's what I was referring to, not a completely custom tailored wedding invitation by some graphic design company. Do people actually get that shit done?

Not to rag on the OP's design, but that's an extremely simple and generic invitation, and you can probably find dozens out there very much like it. You're only going to be paying for the print-job when getting something like that done.

rfalias

I know all about bleeds
And I'll remove the pubes and see what it's like....
Damn you for pointing that out!!

And I know it's simple, we wanted it simple and with those specific colors.

LewieP's Mummy

That is really pretty, you could easilly do it yourself - I made all the invites, order of service , menu cards and table plans myself for my re-wedding; as well as saving a chunk of money, they were exactly what I wanted.

bsjezz

whatever you go for, i would strongly suggest printing this on a gloss or satin stock, and certainly nothing textured. heavy card can still look really cheap if there's a finely detailed design printed on something toothy. you want it to look slick and professional, and these colours are pretty much begging for a glossy finish

MagicToaster

Does your printer have a tri color cartridge or separate CMYK slots?

MichaelLC

We printed our table placards (overlayed the number with a picture of a leaf from the various trees at the arboretum), the name cards, and our shower invites. Had the actual wedding invitations done professionally. Everything turned out great. Home stuff looked good, but unless you have a good quality printer, I wouldn't recommend it. I'll find out where we did our invites from the little lady.

My printer is a

HP 6980

for reference.

Hlubocky

We printed our own save-the-dates on heavy photo paper and they turned out great. This was on a $150 Epson inkjet, so as long as the printer is solid, you will probably be ok. I have some photoshop skills, so creating a good looking design wasn't a problem (we went with the fake photobooth strip idea). You will go through a few ink carts, but once I found out that cheap printing at Kinkos looked like shit (laser, not ink), printing at home seemed like the cheapest option.