- Posted by April on June 7, 2008
I know that I would have appreciated this information when I was making my own invitations. What we quickly found out after we started making invitations as a business is that we needed to find faster and more efficient ways to do things.
1. Don't print cutting lines unless you have to. It's all in the set-up, if you're able to measure things out while you're setting up your print layout you can determine where your cuts need to be and use a cutter that has a measuring surface that's big enough for your needs. Then guess what, you won't have to make two cuts where you should just make one. For instance if you have lines printed you have to cut on one side of the line and then on the other side of the line (two cuts). The two cuts may also throw off your measurements.
2. Get or have access to a cutter that has a big measuring surface. We used a rotary trimmer that we bought at an office supply store. We also found out that we needed to replace the mat that the blade hits when it's cutting and also several blades! Otherwise you start getting crooked cuts. 
An alternative to this, if you're afraid of cutting your invites wrong, take your sheets to a local printer (or us). This will save you a lot of time. I know because for a long time we did our cuts one by one, but now we have a cool industrial cutter that cuts stacks at a time! 
3. Did you know that you can get 5 response cards on an 8 1/2" x 11" sheet (that's the standard 5" wide x 3 1/2" tall)? Yay, great way to save paper! This is also where it comes in handy to not print cutting lines. If you want to know, just ask me how!
Please submit any questions and comments, we'll be happy to help you with your project!