TIPS

DIY Printing

If you are doing your own printing using a laser or inkjet printer at home or work, it is advisable to know what sort of printer you will be using. Reason being is that some papers are only suitable for certain types of printers. As a very general guide...

An inkjet printer generally requires an absorbent surface for the ink. Therefore, coated or pearl or metallic finish papers, as well as translucent papers, often don't work well in an inkjet. The ink can take a long time to dry or may "bleed" or "feather" and therefore not giving your printing a nice crisp and smooth finish.

A laser printer uses heat and is recommended for use on metallic, pearl and translucent papers.

We advise you to test the paper first as we cannot be responsible for any resulting damage to the printer or paper.

What is Paper Weight? This is the term used to describe the thickness of the paper. Paper weight ranges from 80gsm to 125gsm. Card or “cover” weight ranges from 200gsm to 330gsm. Most printers for home use have a maximum recommended paper weight for printing onto of around 160gsm, which is midway between paper and card weight. We don’t recommend printing on card weight if you are using a home printer. Information on the weight of all our paper and card is included in the description of the item. Please feel free to call if you have any further queries.

Folding or Scoring Card Weight Paper

When a thicker card is folded in half, it needs to be scored along where it will be folded. Otherwise, your fold will “wrinkle” and possible not fold straight.

This can be done using some simple household items – the ruler and a teaspoon.

Simply position the ruler where you would like to folder and run the spoon down the paper, making an indent in the paper where the fold will be. Simply fold along the line and you’ll have a clean crisp and exact fold.

Alternativly, a quicker and easier way is to purchase our folding board featured under our DIY items

Glues

Not all glues will suit all types of paper. So when selecting your glue, make sure it will be suitable for what you want to achieve.

For example, transparent paper is best stuck down by studs, most glues you can still see when they dry. You might be able to get away with using a light coat from a glue stick but please test as sometimes this can also been seen.

Bostik Glue sticks, double sided tape and the Helgar PVA glue we found to be the best for gluing paper to paper.

Hot Glue guns are great for some of those finishing touches like the butterflies, roses etc (hot glue guns seem to stick better than the low temperature guns). The more you practice, the easier they become to use.

Mini Glue Dots are terrific for gluing down gemstones and small light flat items, they bond really strong.

Postage

Postage costs is a cost most couples forget to contribute to the cost of invitations. Remember that Australia post has different costs for different sizes of invitations. To give you a general idea - DL size invitations (22cm x 11cm approx) will cost you $0.50 to post as log as it is less than 2cm thick. Any size going out of these dimensions may cost you more to post and therefore you will need to verify with Australia Post.

Please remember that these tips are guidelines and we advise that you should test products to ensure that they will do the job you require them to do.