It was a very intense labor of love but I finally finished our “Save the Date” wood slice magnets for our August woodland wedding.

When I started this project I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I knew that I did not want some cheesy photo of Bryce and me as our Save the Date, but I didn’t know what I could do that would be classy and creative.

Enter Etsy.

Before I scoured Etsy, I came upon a very unique Save the Date that was a wood cut-out of a tree with the couple’s name, date, and wedding location. I was so in love. But I wasn’t in love with the price $123 for 25 (little did I know that I would actually end up spending more than this in the end on my own unique crafty idea).

But with this fabulous idea in mind that I had to have something wood related for our Save the Date, I continued looking on Etsy. I looked at all sorts of post cards with wood grain texture to them but everything seemed too fake.

Eventually I stumbled upon the idea of stamping a small wood slice with our save the date info, but after pouring over tons of listings of these pre-made wood slices I could not find any stamped with a design that I really liked.

Ultimately I chose to make this project really unique and one-of-a-kind by having an Etsy shop called Paper Sushi whose calligraphy was to-die-for, design a stamp just for us. I presented a few of my ideas for a design and she did all the hard work making a cohesive design in her calligraphy.

When my custom stamp arrived in the mail all the way from Germany from Jen with Paper Sushi, I was more than anxious to get started! I had already ordered my wood slices from another shop on Etsy with dimensions that would fit my custom stamp, that way I could get started as soon as my stamp arrived.

I used a black stamp pad from my huge mound of crafting supplies and eagerly stamped my first wood slice.

The result that came out ended up being the beginning of a week long expedition to find the right kind of stamp pad because my stamp was not coming out dark enough on the wood slice. I could trace over the lighter sections of my stamp that didn’t come out, but I couldn’t imagine doing that for 30 wood slices. So I tried every single type of stamp pad I had in my arsenal, trying to get the stamp to come out more visible. Nothing worked.

Eventually I gave up and consulted with Jen the stamp artist to see what she recommended. She suggested an ink pad called VersaCraft which is specifically for porous surfaces such as wood and fabric.

At this point I was even more anxious to get this project in production and I turned the city upside down trying to find Versa Craft with no luck. Not wanting to waste any more time, I surrenderedd and ordered the ink pad online.

In the meantime I spent many sleepless nights trying to brew up a good idea to hold the wood slices on because when I get started on a craft project, I don’t stop until it’s done! I eventually settled on simple square kraft cardstock with a cream border. Since I guessed that many guests might not realize these were even magnets I had to someone incorporate a tag that said they could put the item on their fridge. And lastly, I used the ever-popular baker’s twine in a neutral gray to tie the whole look together (later deciding that I loved the rustic look of brown jute twine instead of the baker’s twine — go figure I would discover this after the fact).

When my VersaCraft ink pad finally arrived in the mail it did not disappoint. It worked perfectly.

After another week spent waiting for special postage stamps from Zazzle and another few days spent doing the calligraphy for the addresses, these puppies were ready to be sent off!

Total cost of the project ended up being $300 including cost of postage and supplies. Maybe I should have just gone with those easy tree-cutouts. But what fun would that have been?