New idea

Ha.  So my crafty self has clearly had invitations on the brain for a really really really long time.  I've had all sorts of crazy ideas with DIY screenprinting.  I think it could be amazingly awesome if it works, or epic fail if it doesn't.  I don't want to send the paper through my printer.  Not so good.  I like that screenprinting would create raised type and texture by virtue of the ink.  I think it would be cool.

Miss Manners and Martha would say that the only way to go with invitations is via engraving.  This is super formal and ridiculously expensive too.  It involves carving the image or type into a plate, inking it, and putting it through a press.  The result is that the paper is forced into those little grooves under tons of pressure.  They type is raised off the paper.

What I would really love is letterpress. It's essentially the opposite of engraving.  It's also a a very old fashioned method of printing which embosses the paper as it prints.  It was the method of printing for a long time.  Old vintage broadsides were made using letterpress as was Guttenberg's first Bible.  Basically it involves making plates or type, which usually looks like rubber stamps.  Originally they were made out of metal, but now they're made out of all sorts of materials.  Then the plate is inked and sent through a giant press which presses the raised type into the paper.  "Blind" pressing means that no ink is put on the plate. Instead the design is debossed into the paper.  It looks really cool as a border and such.

Both engraving and letterpress are extremely cost prohibitive, particularly if you want a custom design.  We're talking as much as $1000 for 100 invitations.  Woah.  My budget is not that big.  As you've heard before, I have designed my own invitation and it's a very bizarre size.  Hence my journey to find a new way of "printing invitations."  And then I really started thinking.  And thinking hard.

I own a Sizzix BigKick machine which is a home die cut machine.  I bought it because I needed to cut thousands of circles out of felt and this was the easiest way to do it.  Essentially a big metal die is pressed into fabric or paper or whatever and it cuts it out like a really powerful cookie cutter.
It also comes with various plates so that you can emboss paper.  Hmmm.... Wouldn't it be cool if I could make my own plate to pass through there?  It could essentially a little mini letterpress machine.  I did some research, and apparently people have done stuff like this before using the embossing plates that you can buy for the machine:

Fake letterpress paper!  I think it looks really good too!  This crafter used just regular old rubber stamp ink.  The bonus of this means that it dries quickly, unlike the ink used for screenprinting which is essentially paint.

But what about the cost of the plates.  How I love the internet tubez.  Boxcar Press makes custom letterpress plates.  I thought it would be way out of my price range.  Um how about not.  For what I need, the cost will be between $65-$85 plus FREE SHIPPING!  This is about the same as the whole screenprinting idea and I don't think it'll take nearly as much time or cause nearly as many headaches.  Plus an ink pad is way cheaper than screenprinting ink.

In the end, I'll probably be paying more than standard invitations that most people who aren't Martha would pay (maybe), but definitely less than having these invitations professionally printed.  I think with the cost of paper (I'm using watercolor paper), ink (with a Michael's 40% off coupon), envelopes (way more expensive than you think they would be), RSVP cards and other enclosures (printed on a home printer.  This isn't worth the letterpress), and postage (omg. omg. omg.  too bad the post office doesn't have coupons!!  So expensive!!), I think the invitation suite will cost about $2 each.

And yes, I will test this out first using rubber stamps.