Handmade Bridal Shower Invitations
I knew I shouldn’t have made a promise on Monday that I would post yesterday. Of course once I announce a scheduled post, life gets in the way. Oh well. I am just happy my puppy is ok! He got dental surgery yesterday (4 teeth extracted!) and he actually had some heart issues under the anesthesia. So needless to say, the blog was the last thing on my mind. But not to worry… the vet was able to regulate his heart beat with a shot of adrenaline and then the procedure went well. It was a very scary thing for us to hear, though. But look at the happy little patient after he woke up!
They even let him keep that dino toy and sent his teeth home in a little tooth container like I used for the tooth fairy back in the day! A little gross but adorable nevertheless.
ANYWAYYYY… moving on to the real reason for this post: my best friend’s bridal shower invitations!
I designed the invitations in Photoshop because our “Breakfast in Bed” theme is very specific (and I couldn’t find pre-printed ones). Besides obviously being a breakfast/brunch shower, the point is to have people bring gifts for either the bedroom or the kitchen. Anyway, I can’t say any more about the details of the shower (since I know she reads this and we want to have a few surprises) but I wanted to share the invitation process. Her wedding is in the fall so her colors are all beautiful, seasonal hues. I picked two of them with the help of the mother-of-the-bride and created the invitation color scheme: wine (matches our bridesmaids dresses) and cream.
Sidebar – for those of you who have never been to paper-source.com, GO THERE NOW (and then please come back to read the rest of this post…)! I am obsessed with it! And then recently I found out that there is a Paper Source store about 10 minutes from my house. Can we say DANGEROUS? I have already been there three times.
I saw that they have an awesome collection of DIY printable invitations so I picked out my favorite ($18.50 per 20 pack)! The ones I picked came as normal A7-size cream rectangular card stock. Then, once you print the invites (there is a MS Word template on the website to help you if you need it but sadly it doesn’t work for Photoshop. Mine required a bit of finagling), you punch out the fun shape.
To make sure guests knew where they were going, I printed up some directions and used photo squares to mount them to pieces of black A2 card stock ($3.25 per 25 pack).
To finish it all off, I got some gorgeous “fig” colored (pretty much the same wine color) A7 envelopes ($4.25 per 10 pack) and some gold foil squares from Staples ($1.99 per 20 pack) to seal the envelopes.
Voila: handmade custom bridal shower invitations! For 40 custom invitations, this only cost me about $65 (plus postage). I thought this was perfectly reasonable when compared to the cost of getting invites from sites like tinyprints.com or weddingpaperdivas.com. Plus, this is the one and only time I will ever get to do this kind of thing so it was completely rationalized in my mind! She is totally worth it and I am very happy with the way they turned out. Now on to the bachelorette party invites… ;)
The first picture is of us in December 1987 and the other is from this past summer! Even though I can never get any gift that is enough to express how much I love and need her, I wanted to give her a little something for Mother’s Day anyway.
The concept was super easy and just took a bit of patience to carry out. I started out with a Styrofoam wreath, a spool of twine, and a few silk flowers.
I started by tying the twine around the Styrofoam and then wrapping the twine tightly around the wreath until the Styrofoam was completely covered. This took me about an our and a half so keep a glue gun handy if you plan on taking any breaks (just a dot of hot glue and a little pressure will keep the twine in place if you need to put it down)!
Once you are happy with the coverage, run out of twine, or feel like your arms are going to fall off, tie off the end of the twine. You are done with the hard part! Using a glue gun (and perhaps a few pins/small nails if your flowers need the extra support), apply some silk flowers to the wreath. I even got super fancy with it (wild woman, I know) and added ribbon for more color.
I told you the concept was easy and I couldn’t be happier about how it turned out! And now my mom has a handmade wreath for her front door all season long (as long as it survived the mail…).
