.You're Invited.

Homemade Invitations

Here are the invitations I made for my sister-in-law Maria's baby shower. The theme of the shower was "Harvest" since it was thrown the week of Thanksgiving--(how appropriate as we are all so very thankful for this pregnancy and for the little bun in the oven!) The baby shower was thrown in Minnesota and since I live WAY DOWN in Virginia, I was asked to be in charge of the decorations and making the invitations--well, just sending out the invitations, it was my own doing to hand make them! 


It was relaxing making these invitations and they cost $17.00. $13.00 were spent on clear labels, something I was not planning on using. I wanted to handwrite the information on each card but when it came down to it, I was not digging the way it looked so I came up with a new plan (use clear labels!) The cardboard was FREE--when I was at Michaels, the Scrapbooking papers were divided by these cardboard cut outs and I thought..hmm..how perfect! The lovely sales associate told me to help myself since they would only be thrown out, so I did! I bought the berries and rafia for about $4.00 total. I used more Scrapbooking paper I had in the"craft corner" of our spare bedroom.


My suggestion--decide ahead of time if you want to handwrite the information or print out the text onto the actual invite and stick to your original plan :)


I did not have the option of printing since I changed my original plan after the invitations were constructed entirely, berries and all! (It would have saved me $13.00..oh well, lesson learned!) I am still very happy with how they came out and I hope these pictures do them justice!


Enjoy these images:

Main page of the invitation

Second page of the invitation which shared the directions

Second page of the invitation which held the directions

Final package minus the envelope

It was a lot of fun mixing and matching the different colors and patterned paper to create fun "Harvest" themes. (If you are planning on doing a similar project, I found the lighter colored paper looked better paired with the clear labels.) I also added a map and slid it in between the two pages of the invitation. With extra cardboard, I created a band which wrapped around the entire invite holding all elements together (this turned out to be my favorite part)--Like I say, little things bring smiles!