Spiffing up our invites - the plan

As I posted back in August, I won 100 letterpress invites from HelloLucky. I was thrilled! I really wanted letterpress invites but I couldn't afford them so I was planning on doing something with pocketfolds and thermography - probably from MyGatsby.com. When I found out that I had won these invites, scary Martha Stewart-ish thoughts ran through my head. I could take the letterpress invites and use them in pocketfolds. I could Gocco the other parts, like maps and RSVP cards. Oh - and I could wrap them with adorable ribbon and accessorize them with leaves.
In my younger years, I would have run with this line of thought. I'd either kill myself and end up getting them done (making myself and all those around me miserable) or I'd realize I'd overshot the moon again and have to settle. I've learned it's better to be upfront with myself and settle to begin with. I'm a scary perfectionist and "settling" for me usually means that everyone else in the world thinks whatever I've done is great. So I thought about how I could take my invites and spruce them up a bit - preferably stuff that could be done before I get the invites because I'm cutting it close and the invites need to go out in the next few days after I get them. So here's what I decided to do:

First, here are the invites I won:

Aren't they pretty? They're from HelloLucky's Marry Me line. I went with this line for a couple of reasons. One - I wouldn't have to worry about rush shipping. Two - they're less expensive than their other invites which means I could afford to buy the matching RSVP cards. That would mean less stuff I would have to make. Sabrina from HelloLucky is who has been helping me and she has been wonderful! So sweet and very quick to respond. I'm very impressed with their customer service so far.

I really wanted pocketfold invites but that's a dream I had to let go. If I had had a longer engagement period and realized how much DIY goodness there was out there, I might have been able to make that happen but I have to deal with what I can realistically do. So here was my spruce up plan. I love the chocolate brown but I wanted to figure out a way to add some red to the invite and I also needed a way to give people more information about the wedding, like maps and accommodations info. I thought that it would be cute to cut out leaf shapes and Gocco our website address on them. I also thought that envelope liners would be another easy way to add color and spiff things up. I considered adding a belly band around everything to hold stuff together. And finally, I thought about how to address them quickly (because I should get them next Wednesday and the majority of them need to go out on Friday).

I'm going to break each of these steps down into a post and give you pictures and information on what worked and what didn't work. I'll post those over the next few days as I get them finished - the belly band and addresses won't be until later this coming week. I'm a Gocco newbie and have never done scrapbooking or card making so if I can do these things, you all can do them as well.