I am going to give my daughter Shannon a baby shower next month. I had this idea swimming around in my head for awhile on how I wanted to hand make the invite and envelope. It seemed like it would be easy, figured it wasn’t going to take much time to make them, and there wasn’t going to be a lot of them, so why not? Well I was wrong on all points, as usual. You know the saying, don’t bite off more than you can chew? I always seem to bite off more than I can chew when it comes to making stuff. My intentions are always good and I get all excited and start doing the project, and I then I end up saying to myself “what was I thinking?” I am not a quitter, and I always finish what I started, but some day, SOMEDAY I will remember to rethink my brainy ideas.
My idea was to make a flash card style invite. I found the perfect vintage picture for the front of the card which got the ball rolling on the rest of the design. Which was my first problem. I am no graphic designer, and pulling graphics and text together seamlessly is not as easy as it looks. I seriously must of made 20 different styles, colors and fonts before I settle on the final style.
The front looks like this {they have already picked out the baby’s name}
The backside was the most difficult side. Getting your important facts on there without making it look like a bunch of text on a page is hard. Not to mention that there are so many fonts to choose from, finding the right one was overwhelming.
I think it looks vintage and similar to a flash card. Spending 26 hours on the design and layout, not so good.
The theme of the shower is book-themed. Shannon is a teacher and loves books. So as you can read on the invite, I suggested to bring a children’s book in lieu of a card. I enclosed a book plate I made to stick inside the book. This task was probably the easiest, I printed my design out on 8 1/2″ x 11 ” label paper and then cut them to size.
Now on to the envelope. A while back I had ordered a shirt from Anthropologie. When I got my package in the mail, they had put my receipt into the cutest white paper envelope that was sewn together. I even saved it because I thought it was so genius.
{you can tell I have had it for awhile. It is looking rather tattered and the string is missing for the clasp}
I thought it would be cute to sew the envelope for the invite just like Anthro did but use writing paper instead. Well, that turned out to be a challenge. I first bought some kids writing paper at the dollar store and the size was all wrong. Luckily, my daughter Tiffany, who is creative and a whiz on the computer, created me the perfect writing paper. She even found a cursive font to match and typed in all the addresses! I I had to do was print the paper and fold. That was a life saver.
Then it was time to sew. Stupid me, I decided to use card stock for the inside lining. Big mistake. I should of gone with what Anthro did and used regular weight paper. Much easier to work with and less bulky. I couldn’t find the right color in regular size paper, so I bought 12 x 12 scrap booking paper. Luckily, Shannon came over and offered to cut the paper to size for me. Another life saver.
Enter my basic, I don’t know how it works, sewing machine. It decided to have an issue with the bobbin and needless to say, what should of taken me an hour took me four hours! I kept having to re-thread the bobbin every time I stopped a stitch. UGH! Nice words were not being said when I was sewing these to say the least.
Honestly, I was attempting a zig zag pattern, kind of looks like a zig zag. {this is a mock up envelope, didn’t think it would be a good idea to post real addresses for the WWW to see}
You can kind of see where my bobbin was messing up on the side seam, but oh well right? I just had to give in and let them be what they were. I had to do 50 of them, and they never would of been mailed out if I focused on that and tried to make them perfect.
I ended up using glue tape to close the darn thing. I even went to the post office to make sure it was up to their standards for mailing. I don’t know how well they are going to hold up going through the post office, hopefully everyone will get it in one piece.
Overall I am ok with how they turned out. So glad they are done and that I stuck with it. But lesson learned, never again will I attempt to make 50 invitations and envelopes. Being an over achiever is over rated, I must stop. I will leave the card making to the experts and buy them next time.
On a side note. I had forgotten to post about my wonderful Mother’s day, so I will leave you with some pictures of me and my girls from our day.
Me and my youngest daughter Tiffany
Tiffany, pregnant Shannon and me
All three of my beauties, Tara, Shannon and Tiffany.
Then here we are walking to our car from brunch, and Tara is being silly behind the camera telling her sisters to act like she is the paparazzi, so the girls are all posing for her and then..
here is me yelling at Tara. She was walking backwards snapping her paparazzi pictures, telling the girls to pose like this and like that, really getting into the moment. But little did she know, there was a golf cart right behind her full of people that she was about to walk into! I had to yell at her to stop before she fell over backwards into the golf cart. It was fun, and made for a good laugh.
I couldn’t ask for better daughters, they treated me like a queen on Mother’s day.
Linking up for these fun parties
http://tatertotsandjello.blogspot.com/ {her button isn’t working}
