Wedding Invitations - Glowforge Project

Hi Forgers!

This is my first post ^.^ I’m pretty proud of this project. It took so many hours to design and cut and I’m so pleased with how it turned out.

After looking at wedding invitations online and seeing nothing I loved, and the invitations I kind of liked were well over $700 and super basic— I decided the best course of action was to make them myself!

I ordered 50pcs of each of the following:
A-7.5 Envelopes (for mailing)
A-7 Envelopes (for RSVP cards)
A-9 80 lb Card Stock in:
“steel blue” (green),
“Nightshift Blue”,
“Graphite Gray Canvas”,
“Burgundy”, and
“Charcoal Brown”
This all cost $104 and I didn’t use all the materials (only needed 29 invitations. It’s a small wedding!) The only other expense was nice paper clips and postage (I also got a custom rubber stamp but I’m not including that in the cost — but could have made that on the glowforge too!)

Ok - for cutting and engraving specs on 80 lb card stock (on GF basic) I used:
Cutting - speed 500 power 30-35 (up to 40 for the canvas stock)
Engraving - speed 1000 power 12

I used little magnets to keep the paper in place, and once cut the paper didn’t move since it still had to be lightly punched out. I did start by putting a magnet outside and inside the cut area, but learned I only needed to keep the outside secured.

I had to be careful what fonts I used - engraving san serif fonts is tricky

I tried two different green colors for the trees - the engraving on both was hard to read.

Finished!



At first I thought it would take me about 15 hours to cut and engrave all these invitations. It was more like 22-24 hours for 29 invitations (6 cards per invitation) on a basic model.

P.S. Please don’t come to my wedding.

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Very nicely done and I promise not to crash your wedding.

I do want to point out for future projects that there’s not a thing wrong with mixing techniques, you could print these and then cut them and save an enormous amount of time.

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True! That definitely crossed my mind, and is a great option! I don’t have a printer, so I would have to get them printed somewhere which is money (granted, not a lot), but I figured it was free to engrave :stuck_out_tongue: just cost me hours of my life lol

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How wonderfully unique! Never seen an invitation with layers like that one, and I can foresee others jumping on the idea cause the results are stunning!

Knocked that one out of the park! :sunglasses::+1:

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Love the layered approach. Turned out great!

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If we’re talking about printing…

Engrave negative once in birch, then woodblock the prints?

I personally like the way it came out, and wouldn’t change anything.

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OK, that’s a new one on me that I didn’t even consider, someone owning a laser cutter but not a ink jet or laser printer !

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Very nice! I love engraved cardstock – these look great.

I did this twice (once for a friend :wink:) and it was really affordable! About $200 to print and cut the whole shebang for 125 invites. When your friends and family start asking you to do theirs, it’s a good trick to keep in mind. I really wish I’d had my GF when I made my friend’s – I manually cut about a bajillion hexagons.

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Not bad! If I have to do any more of these I will def look into getting them printed.

Also, what a good friend you are! I can’t imagine hand cutting a bajillion hexagons. I don’t think I love any of my friends that much :stuck_out_tongue:

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Haha – you really don’t! Lesson learned, and everything for my own invites was rectangular that the print shop cut for me.

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if you’re ok with printing in black (and on 8.5x11 sheets), it’s cheaper to buy a small laser printer and print them yourself. nowadays, a simple BW laser printer is under $50.

Most laser printers in that price range can’t do heavy cardstock… so ymmv.

Ugh. This. So much this. I’ve never been so disappointed in my printer as when I tried heavy cardstock.

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THOSE… ARE… WONDERFUL!

As somebody who also designed their own wedding invitations, I have some understanding of what you went through. We didn’t have a Glowforge to help. :wink:

P.S.: I really wanted to make a General Hospital reference (Luke & Laura’s wedding from a bagillion years ago), but I really didn’t want to show my age quite like that… or the fact that I knew who Luke & Laura were… or what General Hospital is.

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depends on how heavy you mean. i can definitely do 80# mohawk color copy card stock in my cheapo Brother, i’ve run quite a bit of that through it. haven’t tried 100# or more. maybe i’ll bring some home to test tonight, just to know.

probably not “any” cheapo, though, that is a good point. usually the “sticking” point (pun intended) on paper weight has to do with paper path. my brother has one simple turn, so it’s not too bad.

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lol we get that all the time!

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Congratulations on completing a really nice set of invitations. I hope the rest of the wedding is as wonderful as this part.

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I have done stock up to 110# on my Brother HL-3170CDW. Of course, stock weight isn’t the whole story.

Great foray into paper art and beautiful wedding invitations! Congratulations on the invites and the wedding.

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Wow, those layers are just wonderful! The engraving looks great too. Another alternative is to engrave onto wood (you would engrave away everything except the text, and do it in reverse) then ink it up with a brayer and do a poor man’s letterpress with some kind of pressure source like a Big Shot, or just stand on the boards. Here’s an example that I did using a Big Shot.

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Oohhhh! Those are beautiful! Thanks for the inspiration! I didn’t even think to do it that way :slight_smile:

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