WEDDING DIY: MAKING OUR "SAVE THE DATE" MAGNETS

Wedding planning is in full swing for me and George at the moment, so we’ve been getting crafty. We knew from the start that we wanted to design and make our own stationery and decorations, to give our wedding a very handmade, personal feel. It also means I’ll be blogging about our journey and sharing some DIY tutorials for anyone else who might like to have a go. Our latest creations are these “Save the Date” magnets, so below I have written down everything you need to know in case you’d like to make something similar for yourself!

You will need:

– A printable design

– Sheets of card

– Sheets of self adhesive cork

– Magnetic tape

– Guillotine

– Scissors

– Nail or metal file

We started with this pencil drawing that George came up with. We’re having an autumn wedding with rustic/ woodland themed decor, so we thought this cute but simple tree would sum it up pretty well.

The drawing was then scanned into illustrator and live traced so we could play around with the design and fonts. We printed sheets and sheets of paper, experimenting with size, shape, placement and so on, until we settled on our final design.

As you can see we wanted the magnets to be quite minimal and not fussy or bright, so we chose a brown card with all black ink to fit our rustic look. Once printed, we sliced them up with the guillotine. You can use scissors at this stage if you don’t have a guillotine, but I would definitely recommend buying one of these. I got this one when I was in university for about £15 on Amazon and I’ve got a tonne of use out of it. I promise you’ll never attempt to cut a straight line with paper scissors again ;)

We then backed all of the cards with cork, which we cut with kitchen scissors. As you can see, one side of the cork is self adhesive so you simply cut your shape, peel off the yellow paper and stick it down. A word of warning: the sticky side is VERY sticky so take time to align your pieces.

Next we cut strips of magnetic tape, which is another quick peel-off-and-stick job, and smoothed all the edges of the cork with a small metal file. Job done!

So there you have it, our little handmade “Save the Date” magnets. We had a lot of fun designing and making these together and the materials were super cheap too. We spent roughly £20 – £25 on the card, cork and magnetic tape, which made us 32 magnets (less than £1 each!).

I hope you enjoyed this little insight into wedding planning and DIY. I’m sure there will be much more to come, with the wedding only being 6 months away. Do let me know if you enjoyed this sort of post, whether it has inspired you to make something similar yourself or you just like having a nosey. You can also check out my Pinterest board for more wedding related inspiration, to give you an idea of the aesthetic we’re going for.

Things will be a little quiet around here for the next few days as we’re heading down to Dartmoor for a long weekend and I haven’t quite managed to finish or schedule any blog posts. I’m certain I’ll return with lots of pretty photos of the countryside though and will be releasing some new Etsy products on Tuesday. Have a fantastic weekend!

Amy x