MY boarding pass STDs - stumped

I fell in love with boarding pass STDs months ago when I first saw some (on this forum.) At the time I wasn't in mega-planning mode, but I knew it was something I would like to do. Now, that I'm ready to send out STDs I'm finding that having them made is going to be rather costly. (Between $4 - $5.50 ea. from the price quotes I've gotten + design fees.) I will be sending out approx 60 STDs, so that would be about $300, and then I still need to put postage on them. And then I'll need to send out invitations. I'm trying to be frugal for this wedding, but it keeps getting bigger and bigger, so I'd really like to save money where I can. (If I can save $100 bucks here and there, I will be able to put more in the OOT bags!)

I am considering doing these boarding pass save-the-dates myself, but I am VERY worried that they will look "home made" if I cut them out myself. I am not much of a DIY or artsy person and when I try to do things myself they end up looking like a kindergartener made them. I don't have a steady hand, so that worries me (I even have bad handwriting.)

I designed these STDs myself from a mixture of templates and ideas I have seen here on this forum (sorry that I don't know or remember who exactly to give credit to). I think they still need some tweaking, but if I can somehow do these myself and have them come out looking decent, I'm willing to sacrifice a true designers work to save a few bucks.

My wedding planner said they need another pop of color to make them stand out, and she said that the seashell looks like the Shell Gasoline logo. So I'll probably change the seashell. But I don't know if I want to add another color because I'm a minimalist and don't want it to look too busy. My wedding colors are cream and celedon. It makes choosing print colors difficult, but I think the table settings will be pretty. So here's my STD:

The word file I will be printing is white, but for the jpeg, I made the background that beige color because I will be printing on beige or cream cardstock.

Does anyone have any suggestions for cutting these out? I don't want to buy a whole bunch of expensive cutting tools just for this, because then I may as well have someone else do it. Has anyone tried to do this at home and found it to be too difficult? I'm considering doing a few trial runs if I can get just a few pieces of cardstock instead of having to buy a whole ream.

I will upload my template for anyone who wants it. TIA for anyone willing to give me tips or advice!

Boarding Pass STD.doc

I did the Boarding Pass invites myself. Number one tip is not to be too judgemental of your own work!

The most difficult part was cutting the boarding passes. I found that by practicing a few times, I got the jist of it and I was pretty much cutting on the line, and straight too!

If you sign up to get Michael's newsletters, you will receive 40 percent off coupons, which you can use to purchase this:

Fiskars® Portable Rotary Trimmer

I only had to create 40 invites so I didn't want an expensive cutter. You will have to purchase the score blade and the preforator blade.

Plus, you can then print out another 40% off coupon and have the fiance purchase the corner punch.

Fiskars® Corner Squeeze Punches

Practice first, and you will get the hang of it!

I also purchase my cardstock from here:

Cards & Pockets

Good luck!

Oh! And your boarding passes look great!!! If you like them the way they are, then it doesn't matter what the wedding coordinator says. lol

I designed mine myself, but had them professionally printed. For a small fee, they cut, cropped and stapled them in sets. My invites were 6 pages (tickets) long, so I did page 1 with 3 tickets of ticket 1; page 2 with 3 tickets of ticket 2; etc. This way they were able to just staple a stack of 6 pages in the 3 different tickets. I purchased the paper myself, but like $5 or something from Staples and it cost less then $85 to have them printed, cut, cropped and stapled. Money WELL SPENT!

I am not sure if it's a nationwide chain, but I used Minute Man Press.

da.shmoopies - Thank you so much for the links to those tools! I think they will make all the difference in the world. I was thinking I would have to cut all my passes with scissors... and that would have been a disaster. The prices on those are definitely do-able. The Cards and Pockets link is very helpful as well. And thanks for the compliment on my boarding passes. Unfortunately, now that my WC said that about the shell, every time I look at it, I see the gas station logo. Grrr. But that's not a big deal; I can change it easily.

Carly - I've never heard of Minute Man Press, I don't think we have it in Texas. What type of store is it? Is it like a Kinkos? I asked Kinkos if they could cut them for me, but they said no, because it's not a standard size and they don't do rounded corners. I will probably get them printed somewhere like Kinkos or Office Depot. I'm sure it will look much better than doing them on my cheapo deskjet printer. I'll just have to cut them at home.

For my boarding pass invitations - I'm using a beige parchment cardstock to print them out as it adds some texture without looking too busy. I bought the parchment cardstock at Staples online and had it delivered to my local store...much cheaper than the other cardstock sites I saw.

I felt the same way about my boarding pass "proto-types" - would they look too handmade, etc. I've actually surprised myself and I'm having fun...I'm definitely not the crafty type. They look great and as posted above - you will be your own worst critic!!

Definitely the more you cut out the boarding passes the better you get!! Towards the middle of the process I was zipping through them faster than the Fiance could punch out the corners!

If you use the Fiskar's cutter, just make sure that you run the blade down firmly (not too hard though) and then zip it back up the paper so that you cut any little bits that got missed and would keep the cut off pieces attached (you end up ripping paper, by trying to pull it apart).

I was lucky. I had a friend that just had a wedding and they purchased a really good deskjet. They let me borrow it so I saved some $$ that way. If you don't go the printer route, maybe you have some good friends! Otherwise, I agree with Carly about having them printed out.

Also, there are some good tropical prints from the — iDiY site that another BDW bride posted earlier today!

And the DaFonts has good fonts for adding things like a Hibiscus:

dafont.com

I just created mine too! And totally look at dafont.com! I used two fonts under the nature section, Hibiscus and WM Trees 1 (for palm trees). And then one font under Animals for the starfish WM Aquatic 1. And hey if you love the shells, use the shells!! These are what mine look like so you can see the different fonts you could use if you want to change the shells

Those are great Jessica!

I sure wish I had found dafonts.com before I had my monograms made, and my labels, and tags!! I could have saved some moola and done alot of it myself!

I did my STD boarding passes myself. Got cover stock from paper source (Envelopes, Wedding, Invitations, Stationery, Ideas | Paper Source) and had kinkos print them for me because with the thicker paper, it wasn't coming out great on the laser printer. It was only like $20 to print at kinkos and they printed perfectly - though ask them to print one sample first so you can double check that the color ink matches what you picked. I'm not a fan of the rotary cutters but I know others on BDW love them. I used a guillotine paper cutter that worked great. I cut a lot of things for programs and invites, so it was well worth the $60 I spent on it.