Baby Shower Invitations

I am admittedly not a card maker, so I know there is probably nothing original on these invitations, but I had a fun time making them and trying to be creative as I did it. My boss, Linda, asked me to help her with a couple of invitations for baby showers she is throwing. One is for her daughter, and another for her daughter's friend. I agreed and started looking around for inspiration.


The first invitation was for a boy. I had purchased a bunch of Daisy D's baby paper for some Ariel layouts - I thought the colors and circles went well with an under the sea feel. Anyway, I had some left over and thought it would be perfect for a rustic baby boy invitation. I had picked up ideas from layouts and other cards and decided to add them in. One was the corrugated heart on the front. I only had some bright yellow corrugated paper, so I mixed my paints and then painted all the paper, distressed it by sanding and scratching it, then I cut out the hearts and letters. To add a little texture, I sewed around the edges of all the hearts. I had to dye the twill and the bears for the inside. Then we sewed around the edges of all the papers and crinkled them. It took three of us two days to put these together and that was with all the elements cut, punched, painted, dyed, and ready for assembly.



Then on to the baby shower invitations for my boss's new baby granddaughter. I wanted these to have a warm, baby quilt, feminine, vintage feel to them. I used Basic Grey Two scoops for this card, and added lace, velvet ribbon, clear glass beads and some sewing. Instead of inking and crinkling, I decided to sand the edges of everything to give it a soft worn look. Then we sew just around the edges of the front and the inside of the invitation.



For the inside we decided to borrow an element from the first card, the heart and stork tag. But since the feel of this card was so different, I didn't think corrugated paper was what I wanted to use. So, I cut some different papers from the line and glued them on to card stock. Then I used a zig zag stitch to sew across all of the intersecting edges, horizontal, vertical and diagonal. Once that was done, I traced a heart onto the paper and cut out all the hearts, then sewed around the edges of each one with a straght stitch. I think the little quilted paper hearts are just the feeling and look I was hoping for.



These took three of us (four of us one night) three different evenings to finish. And again, that was with everything cut, printed, and prepped for assembly.

Despite all the work, we had a great time making these, and my boss was bitten by the scrapbooking bug. With all the techniques she used on these cards, she kind of got a baptism of fire into the realm of scrapbooking, but she loves it anyway!