Design & Supplies

As I mentionned Friday, I was doing some research on our invitations.
I thought finding the paper for it would be a breeze, well not so much. But I did use the wonderful tool that is internet to figure out how to make the invitations themselves.

I quickly realized that I would have to put the ribbon a certain way to make sure it kept the invitations closed, and that the traditional layout like the following one is easier to do to present things in a pretty way.

Source

I also decided that I wanted a fairly thing ribbon, something around a 1/4 of an inch.
I originally wanted some 6x6 invitations because I knew it would be easy to order a 12x12 paper to that size.

But the hardest part was the paper. I needed two kinds: the paper for the invitation itself, the map/direction and the rsvp and a different paper for the outside layer.
I did Michael's, A.C. Moore, nothing. They had a lot of scrapbook paper yes, but nothing I could use to create such a large number for invitations without exploding our budget.
Thankfully there is a little store: Carolina Party and Paper that had a better selection, well at least enough to get me inspired.
I looked over every single sheet of paper they had. I looked at envelops, card stock, paper stock and all the colors they had. I checked every sheet of every paper sample book in hope of finding the shade of chocolate paper with a bit of texture that my mind was set on.

This is how I came across the paper from nepalesepaper.com. The paper had a beautiful texture and and one of their paper in the sample book was exactly what I wanted. A rich chocolate color that would make you crave chocolate anytime. And they had one in the sample catalogue, they also had a very pretty light brown color that I enjoyed too because it reminded me of copper.
Because the store only carried their paper in 8&1/2 by 11, I decided to contact the company directly.
I discovered through their website that their paper is not only beautiful but good for our planet. Indeed it's the woman of the villages who make this paper and it's also tree free as Lokta is a bush that grows back quite quickly.
They sent me some paper samples so I could decide what I wanted and the owner gave me quotes on their prices.

Here are the various colors in the "brown" scheme that I received:
I decided to go for the light brown since it would look good with a chocolate ribbon. I made a custom order for 100 sheets of 12x5&3/4in paper stock. The goal was to use the paper on the outside of the invitation.

Inside, I visualized an ivory square card stock paper with fall motives such as leaves, or an oak tree branch.
Here are some examples:

I found envelops on envelopemall.com that I liked at $18.75 for 100 in chocolate or $12.95 for 100 in a natural color.

But in the end, because I wanted to order both envelops and cardstock paper from the same company to lower the shipping costs, I went with LCI Paper.

I also search for fall/autumn vectors and here is what I came across:
Autumn
Grunge Floral Background
grunge2
Flowers and foliage I really liked that one, it was actually used to make some very inspiring invitations.

I was thinking of using chocolate tone fonts.

Two websites that helped me to develop my ideas and narrow down what I really wanted are:
DIY invitations
www.invitesite.com they have incredible invitations. If only I could afford them.

Did you used internet to find your inspiration and supplies as well?