Saturday, February 27, 2010

Favors you can use!

Party favors are a fun way to say thank you to your guests, and they're also one of my favorite things to make.  Anytime I think they're appropriate for a party, I'm all over it!  For my wedding, I wanted something that people would actually be able to use later, so I created a list of songs that were special to my husband and I and burned them to CD's. 
How I did it:
1. Choose the songs.  I chose half and my husband chose half.  I've gotten these favors at weddings before, and sometimes people stick with love songs.  I didn't go that route - we just chose whatever we liked best. 
2. Burn them to the CD's.  I used iTunes to do this.  Just make sure you own the actual CD's - if the songs are purchased on iTunes, you can only burn 5 copies before they'll cut you off. 
3. Check your CD's.  I had trouble with some of them not recording all of the songs, so make sure they actually play.  This is kind of time consuming, but worth it.
4. Labels - I found my labels here at HP.com.  You actually design them on HP's website, then print them out on your photo printer.  They came out really sharp with clear pictures.  But, you're somewhat limited in your design choices and fonts.  I'm sure there's a way to create a custom design in photoshop or something, I'm just not that computer saavy.  You could create a photo in photoshop with text and graphics or whatever, and then upload that as your picture.  I just used regular pictures of us.
5. Cases.  I chose to put my CD's in thin cases - this means it's just one piece, you can't open up the back of it to put a piece of paper in it.  But, they're cheaper and simpler, since a lot of people nowadays don't keep the case anyway.
6. You'll want to tell people what's on the CD.  I printed out large label stickers (Avery 5160 style) and stuck them on the back side of the cases.

7. Display - I put my CD's into a basket and added a sign explaining that they were for guests to take.

A note about favors: I had several people advise me not to do favors, or not to buy very many, because people don't take them.  But, I thought I would be mortified if everyone wanted one and there weren't enough!  So, I made 180 CD's for my 250 guests.  I figured most people would only take one per family (150 families), but I wanted a few extras just in case.  Well, I still have about 80 (or more) of them leftover.  So, my friends were right!!  Don't go crazy on favors, especially if they're expensive.  Mine cost me about $1 each, not including my time of course, which is pretty inexpensive.  But now I have a box of CD's that I can't quite bring myself to throw away!!!  :)

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