Crafty Projects: Invitations

Since I posted the sugar and spice baby shower invitation, I thought I would post pictures of a few more invitations I've made in the past year.

I made baby shower invitations for my Sister-In-Law's shower at the beginning of the year. They did not find out the sex of the baby before it was born so it had to be unisex and I was really surprised that there were not nearly as many cute images that were unisex at places like Fotolia and istockphoto as there were gender specific ones. I did find one image that I really loved and decided to make it the cover of the invitation:

I printed the image on heavy photo (8.5x11 that I cut down to 6x6 squares) paper then printed the inside of the invitation on white card stock.

Then I punched two holes in the top of both pieces and tied with ribbon. I actually made them with a shiny satin lemongrass ribbon but I never took a picture. I do have a picture of the sample I made for my Mother-In-Law using a ribbon I had around the house:

My next project was invitations for my Grandmother's 75th birthday party. Since I had lots of envelopes left over from making the above baby shower invitations, I decided to make the birthday invitations the same size. Again, I wasn't really good about taking pictures of the finished product so we'll just have to settle for a blurry, low-light photo taken with my iphone:

Next, I made Chris and Kamila's wedding invitations. They were having a low-key Fire Island wedding and wanted their invitation to reflect that.

The main invitation was printed on velum paper and backed with white card stock. Both were hole-punched in the left hand corner and roughly tied with some twine for a rough, beachy feel.

Then in July I made some fun invitations for my Uncle's surprise 50th birthday party:

That's all I've got for now! It's 4 in the morning and I need to get some sleep!

Sugar & Spice themed Baby Shower

When I decided that I wanted the baby shower I was throwing for my friend Kamila to be sugar and spice themed, I searched the internet for ideas and came across This Post from the blog Fete Fanatic

That blog post was pretty much the only reference I had so I thought it might be a good idea to post about the sugar and spice themed shower I threw, just in case someone else out there is looking for ideas like I was.

First things first: the invitation. I have been making crafty invitations for various friends & family for the past year and have been getting lots of compliments. I wouldn't say that they are the quality that you would get from ordering your invitations from say http://www.finestationery.com/ (a favorite of mine.) I would say that they have much more of a crafty feel. I purchased some adorable vector images from istockphoto of cupcakes and themed the invitation around that:

It is just white card stock with the invitation printed on it backed with 2 different cardstocks, a solid hot pink and a pink and green stripe. I corner punched the white cardstock for a feminine feel and glued it all together.

Next thing on my mind was decorations. I knew that I was going to do round tables of five with white chairs and I wanted to have a nice centerpiece on each table. My thought process was basically like this: sugar and spice>spice>spice drops>spice drops in a vase! I went to the local craft store and purchased 10 glass vases. 5 were wide ($5 each) and 5 were skinny ($3 each). Then I bought 15 bags of spice drops for $1 each at Wal-Mart and some pretty pink and green ribbon that I spotted while I was there. The day before the shower, I went to Costco and bought 3 pink-themed bouquets for $14.99 each.

I placed the skinny vase in the middle of the wide one and filled in the space between the two with spice drops. Then I put some water and flowers in the skinny vase, tied a ribbon around both the skinny and wide vases (I used a bit of scotch double sided tape to keep the ribbon in place) and that was it! The result was 5 sugar and spice themed centerpieces that cost about $20 each.

Myself and two other women made homemade drinks for the shower and I made cute signs that I tied (and double sided taped) to the beverage dispensers that I bought from Amazon.com.

and I tied green and pink ribbon around the stemless white wine glasses that I used for the shower to add a fun, girly touch.

Since the shower was sugar and spice themed, we had a light lunch of salads and wraps and then a HUGE dessert. I got the cupcakes and cake from the bakery and everything else was from the bakery at Costco (except for the big lollipops and rock candy, which I got at Party City.)

I made an "Everything Nice" banner using letters printed on individual pieces of card stock and ribbon. I was so busy that I didn't notice when the banner started to sag so I don't have a great picture but I think you can get the idea.

I also did a story book wishing well. I found a cute pink and purple storage bin at Target and I printed a sign with the cupcake from the invitation that said "Baby's First Library."

Everyone had a great time! I hope this post helps give you ideas for throwing a sugar and spice themed shower of your own.