The entire California contingent of my extended family compound just returned late last night from San Diego. We flew down there for our big annual industry conference; and James and I were lucky that our significant others and Maia were able to join us for the weekend. It was a tiring but fulfilling weekend of standing on our feet and talking to teachers, and it’s great to be home - especially since it’s Thanksgiving week!!! My favorite time of year :)

One thing to be especially thankful for this year: we’re getting married! :) (In case you hadn’t heard.) Our wedding will hopefully encompass many elements that reflect things we like and find meaningful. We are also really excited about DIYing as much as we can. Well… I’m really excited. And Joe’s really supportive and involved, though he tends to be a bit more… realistic, shall we say, about what can and cannot be accomplished within reasonable allocations of time that does not then take over our lives, prevent us from sleep, impact our job performance and end up tossed in the trash heap due to execution malfunction. This comes from his observation of some projects of mine in the past… but I say, I can always sleep next November! :) This stuff is fun!!!

Back in October, Clarissa and my folks were planning our awesome engagement party in Palo Alto and Clarissa had prepared to send out very charming evites. However, I thought I’d jump on that opportunity and practice crafting some invitations on a smaller scale as a test run. It helped greatly that Maid of Honor Miriam was headed out to California for several days, and had graciously (foolishly?) offered to help. So off we went to our local PaperSource to scope out some goods.

The PaperSource in Palo Alto is, unfortunately, located within a 10-minute walk of home. They’re friendly there, they offer classes, they have beautiful paper and a myriad of paper crafting supplies. Let’s just put it this way, when I walk in these days, many of the girls there will say: “Hi, Geraldine! Haven’t seen you in a while!” (and laugh, because “a while” really means “since yesterday.”)

For our California engagement party invitations, we experimented with heat embossing, a very cool technique Joe discovered when accompanying me to PaperSource one day. Basically, it’s rubber stamping, enhanced.

Step One: You stamp a design.

Miriam shows us the stamp, which she had to use… a lot. Joe’s demonstrating Step Three, see below.

Step Two: Sprinkle on some embossing powder, tap away the excess powder, leaving behind powder which has neatly adhered to the stamped ink.

Step Three: Lastly, take a little heat tool (sorta like a super-hot hair dryer) and heat up the powder, which melts…

…and creates a nice, raised surface of the stamp design.

Then all you have to do is some simple assembly work…

Et voila, engagement party invitations, complete:

If you’re really lucky, Maid of Honor Miriam will agree to address the envelopes with her gorgeous handwriting and you’ll have hand-calligraphered invitations.

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