Calligraphy, Embossing, and the Elegant Twenties

I've posted about our save the date postcards before, but they're finally done and in the mail! Just as a refresher, here are the save the dates I decided on.
The postcards are all from a book of 24 postcards called George Barbier: Postcards of the Elegant Twenties. George Barbier was a French illustrator in the 1920's, and I fell in love with these postcards after randomly coming across them on ebay. Since these aren't exactly in the normal "Save The Date" format, I had to figure out how I wanted relay the the message.

First I got my supplies together.
Supplies: embosser, clear embossing powder, green embossing powder, embossing pen, bronze ink pad, "Have you heard the news?" stamp, and green 2.0 Y&C Calligraphy pen.

The first thing I decided was to use the font French Script MT. I had previously decided to make this the official font for our wedding. Why you ask?
Because the M and N look like they have a 7 in them. Yes, Mr. Camrah's 7 obsession lives on.

I'm not a professional calligrapher. So, I practiced the font A LOT before writing on the actual postcards and chose a calligraphy pen with a small tip. I also decided to use a green pen as opposed to a normal black pen because a) green is one of our wedding colors and b) I thought it would stand out a lot more than black ink.

Mr. Camrah said that he thought the postcards would be more special if the postcards were sent in envelopes, so I was able to use the entire back of the postcard to write on. This is the end result.

TA-DA!

The picture isn't the best, and it doesn't show the embossing very well. "Save the Date" is embossed using an embossing pen and green embossing powder.

Embossing pen tips:
-Use the smallest tip.
-I found that the letters came out more clearly when I only went over the boldest part of each letter
-I barely touch the pen to the paper other wise the embossing will be too thick
-Try to write the e's and a's carefully so that they don't look like mush.

I added a little embossing fun to the back of the envelope too.
I found the "Have you heard the news?" stamp when I was looking for the calligraphy pen and decided it would be a great way for me to learn how to emboss. What I learned is that I needed CLEAR powder for stamp embossing. I bought white embossing powder thinking it was the clear powder. After the practice runs, I realized I'd have to be more careful when buying embossing powder.

They are by no means perfect, but I really like that they are all different. They also have the DIY charm. I'm so excited to get feed back from our guest and find out what they think of them. They took about two weeks of my free time, but they were totally worth it.

Did you have any projects that took a while but in the end it was worth it?