Unique Destination Wedding Invitations

These destination wedding invitations can be made to fit with any destination by changing up the colors and papers. The destination theme comes in as the tags and postal style stamps I used for the front of the invitation. It reminded me of an old suitcase that traveled around the world. Not to mention the wording for the front of the card to go along with a destination theme: "Our Love Is A Journey, Starting At Forever, Ending at Never".
I made these destination wedding invitations using a variety of different tools and techniques. Combined a little desktop publishing, with decorative scrapbooking papers, and rubber stamping. This will also call for art pens, markers, or colored pencils. I topped it all off with a satin ribbon tying the card shut.

Materials used to make the
destination wedding invitations:
8 1/2 by 11" card stock
(two different colors)
scrapbook background papers
decorative rubber stamps
or
Die cut tags
ribbon
glue-stick & craft glue

Step One: Getting the words on paper. I set up the front of this card as a 2-up layout (in other words two invitations to a page). You do not necessarily have to even have any text for the front of this card but I thought it looked nice. Because they are "destination wedding invitations" I thought the quote I chose to be appropriate.
It reads "Our love is a journey, Starting at forever, And ending at never."

I printed the text for the inside of the card in a 4-up layout because it is intended to be printed onto a separate decorative paper(or scrapbook background paper), cut into rectangles and attached to the inside of the invitation for a bit of contrast. Of course you could easily set it up for a 2-up layout as well and print it straight onto the inside of the card.

Step Two: Cutting the paper. The card stock base of the destination wedding invitations should be cut in half horizontally to make two pieces measuring 5 1/2 by 8 1/2". Next cut some scrapbooking background paper into squares to become part of the base of the card. The bottom piece of scrapbook paper should measure 4 1/4 by 2 1/4". You will need double the amount of these as you will attach them both to the top and bottom of the card. These pieces should both be in the same pattern and color.

In cutting the paper for these invitations you have two options. You could visit a local copy or print shop and take advantage of their cutting services (which are inexpensive and Easy)...

You can cut all of the paper yourself using a good personal hand paper cutter, or even a cutting mat and Exacto knife.
* For more about cutting and folding invitation paper, personal paper cutters, and where to get them visit the Card making Basics section cutting and Folding page.)

Now heres where it gets a lil' tricky...

Step Three: Making embellishments for the destination wedding invitations. I made the tag embellishments on the front using rubber stamps shaped like old fashioned luggage tags. If you cannot find anything like these you could also use tag die cuts or paper punches.

* about the rubber stamp collection I used

I stamped the tag images onto a sheet of dark brown card stock (or maybe it was just cardboard I'm not sure...). I used a black ink to do this. Next I cut the images out leaving a tiny margin around their borders. I used the same technique with a couple of decorative round stamps to help decorate the card. One of the stamps had a small violet decoration on it. The other had some strawberries and leaves. I cut them out into circular pieces. To make these two circular pieces stand out on the paper I used some art pens to color in the leaves, strawberries and flowers.

Using the same luggage tag rubber stamps I stamped the images onto the back of some scrapbooking background paper. I cut out the shapes once again, but this time cutting inside the tag decoration's borders to make a paper shape to fill in the middle of the tag.
As you can see in the picture of the destination wedding invitations, I used a pair of craft scissors to cut the edges of the tag on the top of the card. To do this I first cut out the tag shape. Then I used the craft scissors on the shape. After using the craft scissors on the tag shape I kept the left-over bits of scrapbooking paper to help make the embellishment at the bottom right hand corner of the page.
I cut a small rectangle out of a colored sheet of paper (for this I used yellow card stock but you can use anything you find suitable.) I cut the rectangle to be sized only slightly bigger than the bits of leftover scrapbook paper. I then glued the scrapbook leftovers to the paper rectangle, and glued the strawberry rubber stamp decoration to the top of them both.
To finish off the luggage tag decorations adhere the scrapbooking paper cut-outs to the inside of each tag using different colors and patterns for each separately. I would recommend attaching them with a glue stick. Craft glue is too heavy and will warp and wrinkle the paper.

Step Three: Put it all together! Start by folding the card stock base. You may need to score the card stock before you fold it to prevent a wrinkled crease.For more about this visit the link above about cutting and folding invitations.
Next attach the two scrapbook paper rectangles to the front. Do this using a glue-stick. Glue one aligned to the top of the card and one to the bottom.

Next attach the luggage tag embellishments. You can use a little craft glue to help attach these but I would mostly use glue-stick. Glue the first embellishment to the top half of the card, aligning it to the right. Glue the second tag to the bottom half aligned to the left.
Next all you must do is attach the remaining decorative pieces in the spaces left over to the left and right of the tags.

To finish the destination wedding invitations card you will attach the ribbon across and around the entire card. First cut out a long length of ribbon (about 7 - 10 inches). Using craft glue attach it to the card using the top scarpbook paper seam as a guide. Glue the ribbon so it is just covering the seam. I applied the glue using a small paint brush, but you could also use a Q-tip or even your fingertip. Do not glue the ribbon all the way to the edge of the front of the card. Make sure and leave about 1 inch to the edge so that the bow tying the card shut will fall onto the front of the card instead of at the seam.
The last step is to glue the inside text (which was printed onto separate embellishment paper) to the inside of the card. Make sure and center this paper as best you can to the inside right side of the card.

More tips for making destination wedding invitations...

* You can choose to use the same rubber stamp technique I did to make the invitation's embellishments, or you can use tag shaped paper punches to get the job done a bit faster.