Here we are, as promised! We picked: the heart Save-the-Date!

It’s more vibrant, and you can see more of our faces.

We picked up our 100 5×7 cards from our printer less than 24 hours after we dropped off the file. It came to $71 for the 100 cards, $0.71 each. No design fee, because that part was a DIY. Why did we get 100 when we’re having a 65 person wedding? I wanted spare to experiment with, and it’s always good to get more. What if you realise you’ve left Auntie Muriel off the guest list, or you’ve gotten closer to your new co-workers? But first and foremost, this was about the experimenting. I pulled out one of my more recent crafty purchases, the Crop-a-dile Corner Chomper.

It’s big, it’s beefy, and it rounds corners with two different radii. I actually bought this guy (with a coupon) to replace another corner rounder I had. The other one I have is this orange Fiskars one. It’s very small, not nearly as beefy, and I was concerned that wedding crafts might prove too much for it (even though I wasn’t sure what I’d be rounding at the time I replaced it!). It also does the same two sizes of corners.

I went to town, and rounded the corners of a couple cards with the Corner Chomper, then showed them to Cinnamon Buns.

He said that while he liked the rounded corners (especially the 1/2″ radius) better than the normal ones, he wasn’t crazy about how the Corner Chomper chomped. The corners didn’t round nicely into the straight sides of the cards. Confused? Here’s a close-up of the offending part:

I had noticed it, but didn’t think he would! I had had that problem with my little Fiskars punch too, but I was generally trying to round the corners of 1″ squares before, so I thought I’d give it a go on these big cards.

The little guy triumphs!

Cinnamon Buns and I chatted about whether or not it was silly, what it added, and whether we should put the time into rounding the corners of the Save-the Dates. The answers were: not silly, because we like it, it makes them different than your average postcards and it mimics the heart, and yes, we should put the time into it. I actually took a bunch in to work, with the little orange rounder, and rounded away in the greenroom while waiting for the show to start. (Lest you think I’m being a bad employee, there’s always half an hour of ‘hurry-up-and-wait’ after the audience has been let in to the theatre, but before the show starts. Actors are getting in to costume, I hang around nearby in case anyone has lost their socks or pops a button, but normally I read trashy magazines for half an hour.) I got half done then, and then did the other half the next morning in front of the TV. I’d say they took me an hour, tops, for all of them. Not too much of a time commitment for a cute little detail!

And the little orange corner rounder that I thought was going to be too weak? It did totally fine on all 400 corners it rounded. I’m hoping the alignment issue with the Corner Chomper is something that will be resolved once I get to know it and use it more – in short, I hope it was user error and not the tool itself, because I really wanted to like it.

Did the underdog tool surprise you in any of your wedding DIY? Do you think we’re crazy for even spending an hour rounding corners?