Another stationery project I’ve been meaning to do for the longest time [*cough* almost a year now *cough*] is our thank-you cards. Once I finally got my butt in the seat long enough to design our Save the Dates, I figured I could knock out the thank-you design as well.

On the one hand there was no real hurry to do these since we weren’t having an engagement party or expecting to have any showers or anything. On the other hand, it’s something so simple that not doing it ahead of time was foolish. So I’ve been beating myself up over it for a while (lightly, of course–there have been other things to worry about) and it’ll be good to get this item off the to-do list!

I designed these cards with a few key elements in mind:

1. Versatility. If I was going to print up a bunch of these, I’d like them to be useful for both wedding thank-yous as well as anything else we might need some pretty cards for, even after the wedding.
2. Simplicity. This kind of goes with the point above, but I didn’t want anything overly fussy because I wanted them to work for any situation and look right if T was sending one out without me.
3. Print-ability. I’ve been dying to use my Gocco again and these seem like a perfect excuse to drag it out and turn The Abyss into a press-room.

Because I have one of the smaller Goccos (table-top screen printing “machine” manufactured in Japan by Risu), the PG-5 to be exact, my printable area is limited to 5 7/8″ wide and 4″ long. Luckily, an A-2 (announcement-size) envelope fits a 5 1/2″ x 4 1/4″ card easily, and I happen to have a box of those envelopes in my stash, too. What’s even better is I have some half-sheets (5.5″x8.5″) of ivory linen stationery-grade paper, enough to get about 30 cards made. And I probably have some full sheets I can cut down, too, if I look hard enough. Score one for my paper-hoarding tendencies!

The screens and bulbs for the Gocco can be tough to find (mostly the bulbs, and when you do they are exPENsive!) but I’d bought a fairly good stock of them a while back and have plenty of ink, too, so I think I’m all set for supplies.

Of course, even with a simple design (maybe especially with a simple design) it still takes some time to get things just right.

Originally I’d planned to have our names down in one corner with a border around the edge of the card, breaking where it intersected our names. Sounded good in my head, but looked a helluva lot like the JC Penny logo and that was not the feeling I wanted.

So the frame was out, but then I started rethinking my font choice.

I was sure, going into this, that I wanted a sans serif font, something nice and clean and streamlined. And while they were okay, as I scrolled through my incredibly long list of fonts I kept pulling out the serif fonts after all. Finally I picked 2 of each (really not liking the sans serif when they were next to their serif cousins) and asked Mr. Road Trip to be the tie breaker.

Right away the 2 sans serifs were out, so we were on the same page there. Then it came down to our 2 serif font contenders and he went with Fontleroy Brown, mostly because the ampersand was cooler.

Once I got rid of the riff-raff it was time to decide if the card even needed anything else. I moved the names around on the digital sheet, seeing if Todd preferred the names somewhere other than the lower right corner. Then it was frame, no frame, or maybe just a line.

Like I said, a simple design isn’t always so easy to decide on. The single underline turned out to be just enough to anchor our names and I totally agree about the coolness of that ampersand.

Next is getting them printed!

Have you ever found it hard to decide on otherwise simple wedding choices?