Q & A: Thermography

I really love your invitations! I just got engaged and have a while before we get married. I have been following your blog for sometime now (even before I was engaged!) and I love, love, love your DIY invitations on your site. My fiance and I are all about the DIY stuff! I'm really eager to get started but at the same time I have the desire to have the raised printing- (thermography?) I don't know anything about the printing or invitation world, but is there any way I can do it from home? Do I need special machines or can I use my regular inkjet? Do you know where I can get them? I'm really curious and interested to do this. Any help you have is greatly appreciated!! From Nicole

Dear Nicole,
Many congrats on your upcoming wedding! How exciting and I love your adventurous spirit to go DIY. As far as thermography goes, there's no real "at home" solution that's exactly comprabable. There are some crafting supplies that can be used (think rubber stamps, embossing powder and a heat gun) but you'd have to have a custom stamp made of your wording (about $50) and then some of the letters may or may not read well with the embossing powder. Actually, it could be pretty cool, especially if your stamp was made from a caligrapher and if you were going for a purposefully crafty feel.

Otherwise, thermography should be left to the professionals. The only problem is, it's getting harder and harder to find a good thermographer who is inexpensive and willing to do small quantities and who will work with someone without a graphic design background. Don't get me wrong, they're out there (especially if you'll be going through a fully custom option, or a store-bought option such as Papyrus) but for the DIYer going on her own...it could be tough.

So...all that to say Nicole, you may consider going for a crafty feel and if you're looking for crisp text you might consider using the embossing powder/gun on some of the details stamped on your invite and then for the text itself, run each card through an inkjet printer. I use a Canon inkjet and the results are really pretty professional.

Hope that helps and please share pictures of your project! We'd love to see your process and how they turn out!

Image courtesy of Cassiopeia on the OneWed Forum (though I wouldn't recommend using glossy paper for embossing or printing. Most wedding invitations are printed on matte paper and it will work best for most DIY projects.)