Last August was full of weddings for me. My husband and I went to 3 weddings in the span of 4 weeks! You may recall a couple of the cards I made for them.

One of the weddings was for Katie and Peder. I've known Katie since I was 10. My family moved into a new house and pretty quickly met Katie and her 2 sisters who lived next door. She and my younger sister became close friends and have stayed in touch all these years. So of course we were all ecstatic when she announced her and Peder's engagement!

Shortly after she got engaged, Katie got in contact with me and told me that after seeing the invitations I made for my sister's wedding in 2014, she knew that I had to make her invitations, too! Of course I said yes!

The wedding colors were pink, coral, and yellow, with grey for the boys, so I found a pale grey and pale coral for the invitations.

Katie chose to go with a paper-lace design with K&P watermarked behind the text. It is difficult to see in the photos, but it shows up better on the RSVP back.

The back of the invitation featured a pocket to hold the RSVP, envelope, and insert card with map and directions. Everything tucked neatly inside so nothing got lost when you opened the envelope.

Katie and Peder's wedding was gorgeous! The ballroom was so elegant, the decorations were fun and colorful, and the dancing was highly entertaining! And I wouldn't have expected anything less from such a fun-loving couple. Especially since their wedding party had 22 people in it!

Congratulations to Katie and Peder!
And thank you for letting me be a part of your special day!

Happy Crafting!

I've done several invitations over the last few years, and an invitation order usually involves at least a few dozen invitations, if not over 100! Imagine my surprise when a friend asked me for just one invitation!

She has a friend whose husband planned a Vegas getaway for her 40th birthday! And not just for him and her, but for 3 other couples! And she had no idea! What an amazing gift, right? So my friend and the other 2 couples decided to make the weekend extra special and plan a special dinner, a spa afternoon, and a show.

Since the husband and friends planned the whole weekend, they didn't need invitations, but the birthday girl did, so that's what I got to make! A reverse invitation. And what better colors to use for a Vegas getaway than gold and black?

I stamped the band holding it all together with some gold embossing to give it a bit more shine.

I made the invitation a tri-fold invitation with two pockets so the show tickets and a birthday message could be tucked into the pockets.

The center panel outlined the schedule of events for the weekend as well as a description of the spa treatment.

I am told the birthday girl was thoroughly surprised and the weekend was amazing. And I am super jealous.

Happy Crafting!

A wedding doesn't always have to be a big, expensive, extravagant event. One of my brides, Marie, chose to do a small destination wedding and have a local reception a few months later. Her mother (who is a friend of my parents) contacted me last spring about making the invitations for the local reception. Of course I jumped at the chance!

Marie had sunflowers at her wedding, so I wanted to find a way to incorporate those into the design of the invitation without getting too 'theme-y'. Is that a word? It is now!

The mother of the bride and I settled on this design; bold and elegant, but simple and fun. I love it!

(Names and contact info have been changed on the invitation to insure privacy)

As you should know by now, I'm slightly obsessed with distress inks. I was so excited to be able to incorporate them into this project to create a soft watercolor look. I heat embossed the sunflower stamp with black embossing powder, then used the distress inks and a paintbrush to paint the sunflower with bright yellows and oranges.

A few things I learned from this project:

1) Watercolor paper is really the best thing to use with any technique that uses water. Unfortunately, I haven't found a watercolor paper that goes through the printer and shows the printing well, so I used a heavy cardstock. It worked well and they looked great, but I'd love to find a 'printable' watercolor paper.

2) Along those lines - don't overwork the colors. I had to be careful with my brush to avoid the paper from pilling with the amount of water I was using, which was good because the more I messed with the colors, the less I liked the outcome. Less is more!

3) If you are using black embossing powder, do yourself a HUGE favor and use an anti-static powder tool. For some reason, black embossing powder sticks to EVERYTHING!!! Another option is to use black ink and clear embossing powder.

4) If everything is not dry before you start to assemble, it will smear and you will have to do it over. Ask me how I know...

Congratulations to Marie and Matt on their wedding, their reception, and beginning their life together!

Happy Crafting!

My mom has a group of really close girl friends from college. 
There are 8 of them. 
It can be quite intense when they are all together.

The great thing about having a bunch of friends like that is that there is always something to celebrate! Most of their kids are around marriage and baby-having age, so there are lots of showers to plan and attend. They all take turns hosting bridal and baby showers for each others' kids. 

Whenever my mom hosts, she comes to me for the invitations (DUH!), and now one of her friends has also started coming to me first for her invitations, too! This summer alone, I've made 3 sets of invites for Carol; one set for my sister's bridal shower, one set for another daughter of 'The Girls' (it sounds like a cult!), and one set for her daughter's friend.

I've really enjoyed making all these invites because it gave me a break from the pile of periwinkle products I had to make for my sister's wedding this summer (another post later - I'm still recovering and taking photos).

When I make invites as a commission for someone, I find out what theme, colors, or preferences they have in place for the event so I have a direction. Next, I create 3-5 prototypes using different papers and designs and send photos of these to the buyer. Once they choose a design (or tweak/combine one), I get crafting!

Here's the invite I made for Carol for my sister's shower:

I actually didn't make any other prototypes for this one and I didn't show Carol ahead of time because she said I could do whatever I thought Erin would like best. And Erin loved them! She always keeps stuff I make for her, she's so sweet!

Here's another invite I made for Carol:
(I put generic info on this one for photographing)

Her instructions were "bright colors".
Here are the other 3 prototypes I made for this order:

The last order came with the instructions "sangria wine red and eggplant purple with matte gold as an accent". Now there's a bride who knows what she wants! Here's what Carol chose:

And while I did make 3 other prototypes, I only made 'dummy' words for one other one:

So there we are!
I am so happy that Carol likes my designs and comes to me for her invitation needs! I hope some of the people who get the invites seek me out as well!

Happy Crafting!

My sister, my little sister, my only sister, is engaged! Her boyfriend asked her on her birthday in August and we've been planning ever since! I get to be her Matron of Honor (I'm married, so I'm no longer a maid), and I'm helping out as much as I can with all the plans. 

As my gift to her, I"m making all of her paper goods. Save the Dates, Invitations, Thank You cards, programs, advice cards, the whole nine yards! Plus, I['m throwing a shower for her, so there's all those paper goods, too!

I've been experimenting with different layouts and ideas for the invites, but I ultimately had to make the Save the Date cards first, so last week, I finally sat down and finalized a design. 

Then I hunted down supplies and spent 3 days in front of Netflix cranking out 100 of these puppies! 
(the following picture was taken in a dim room, so the colors aren't accurate)

I am very happy with how they came out, and better yet, so is my sister!

Erin's favorite color is Periwinkle and I was able to find the perfect shade of paper to match her dresses! And her flowers are going to be hydrangeas and I found a hydrangea stamp on eBay! It's actually a double stamp. I had to stamp the light blue with one stamp, then wait for it to dry, then stamp in exactly the right place with a separate stamp in a darker periwinkle.

It took a lot of time, but they are perfect!

I'm thinking of doing the invitations in a similar, simple style. Now I can start working on them...
And the programs...
And the advice cards...
And the thank you cards...
And the shower invitations...

Oh my, I think my head is going to explode now...

I wanted to start a feature called Flashback Friday where I would showcase a project I had done in the past. And I had it all planned out for this last Friday to showcase my wedding paper creations. I had photos, ideas, I was even starting to write out the post in my head.

Then I got sick.

It happens every year at the end of school. My body shuts down, whether from exhaustion, relief, or all those little preschool germs finally getting to me. And every year, I forget about it till I actually get sick! So Friday night and all day Saturday, I was out with my yearly cold and unable to write my Flashback Friday. Now that it's Sunday, I thought about writing something else, but I am so excited about telling the story of my first huge jump into cards and invitations, I decided that this will just have to be Flashback Sunday instead.

~*~*~*~*~

My husband Mike and I were married on June 29, 2007. But this paper creation story starts well before that. When we started making wedding plans in the spring of 2006, we knew we wanted to save money. The first, and most obvious choice was to make all the invitations ourselves. Well, not ourselves, myself. Since I worked a second job at a scrapbooking store (Artsy Tartsy) at the time, I had tons of resources and supplies at my fingertips.

Usually, brides pick out their dresses, their flowers or at least their colors before anything else. I picked out my paper before anything else. No joke! I could not move ahead in any of my planning until I had picked out paper that I loved. And I fell in love with this:

It was funky and girly and all of my favorite colors in one. I quickly bought out all we had in stock and asked the owner to order more! I began by making myself a planning book. And how perfect to have my color right on the cover - no need to drag around samples; there were right there with me all the time!

After pouring over books and magazines dedicated to weddings and invitations and cards, I finally came up with a samples of all the things I was going to make. I measured, cut, inked, and assembled, and with the help of my sister, I finished all our wedding invitations!

Simple, elegant, and with a touch of personality. But I wasn't done.

I didn't like the tradition of a simple guest book. Too impersonal. After all, I knew who was at my wedding, why did I need all their signatures? So I got an idea from a wedding magazine for reception cards. 4x6 cards that you put on the reception tables for people to write down their well-wishes, advice, and (as in the case of our friends) humor! So that's where I put in more personality and color!

Way cute, right?

But again, not done.

I was on a creative roll. And I was loving every minute of it! Next on the list was thank you cards.

And slightly less creative; programs:

The hardest thing about my wedding day was the fact that I could not have my camera in my hand. Seriously! Everything else went beautifully, there were no major problems. But I was constantly seeing photos I wanted to take. Now, I had done some major research on photographers and I had chosen a husband-wife team who I knew would capture my vision perfectly (and they did), and I had several trusted friends and family members armed with cameras of their own. But I still wanted all the photos I could get. From every perspective. So Mike and I made up these:

Little business cards with our contact info on them so people could send us their photos. And we took that photo on the front ourselves. For those of you who are confuse; it's a video gamy controller wound around a calla lily (our wedding flowers). I call it "Gamer Romance".

So that about wraps up everything from my wedding! This was the most ambitious, most time-consuming, and most fun project I have ever done. The things I learned from this giant project was:
1) Adhesive is expensive - buy in bulk.
2) ALWAYS use a good quality, SHARP cutter.
3) One step at a time to prevent getting overwhelmed.

Thanks for reading my giant post!