April Shower: The Invite

I will break this post up for those that have short attention spans because, well, it's a lot of pictures....  

I co-hosted a bridal shower for my friend last weekend with 5 other women. Four out of the six of us coordinated everything and poured a lot of blood, sweat and tears into the decor and food.  The blood was negligible, because really, you can't be a paper crafter and expect to escape paper cuts.  The sweat was, well, sweat.  The tears mostly came from Mr. Bean every time I told him we'd have to order in again, but he managed to stay alive. 

We anticipated 60 people would attend - 78 were invited - and had only an hour to set up.  This was definitely the biggest event I'd ever worked on with the most number of hosts, so for about 2 weeks I literally lost sleep trying to wrap my head around how we would pull the shower off.  But, I think we did a really good job considering. Half of us were working from out of town so big props to the iPhone, email, FaceTime, email, camera phones and email.  Yes, there were a ton of emails....thank you internet and Steve Jobs!

Once Anita and I hashed out a color scheme, we got to work on the invitations.  Sharmee's favorite color is red, so Anita and I were sure to incorporate that in the color scheme. I pretty much drove Anita crazy because I couldn't make up my mind whether to make the invitations or buy them despite the fact that in a few days I was leaving the country for almost two weeks.  To me, the invitation sets the tone for the event, so I am always careful to choose the right invite.  And, I will admit, sometimes I over think it. Handmade invitations aren't always the most cost effective approach despite the perception that DIY is cheaper.  Especially considering we had to make at least 65 invites.  But, it is a labor of love.  I think anyone that crafts will agree with me on that one.  But, I'm hard headed and crazy and paper is my thing so we went with handmade.  Since I used quite a bit that I already had in my stash, these invites ended up costing a lot less than buying something online. 
 

I designed the invite in PSE and went through about 200 different design options.  But, I finally decided to go with a long invite since we had so much text and I wanted to keep it as clean looking as possible. 

Originally, I wanted to add double faced satin ribbon to make a bow that would wrap around the invite, but the floral element threw me for a loop since I couldn't get it to not completely clash with the envelopes and the ribbon once it was printed, so Anita came up with the clever idea of using our scraps to make sort of a mod belly band around the invite.  Awesome idea.  

The invite fit into a #10 standard sized envelope.  I created some labels for each envelope since addressing 65 invites wasn't exactly the best use of my time 4 days before I left for Ireland but I still wanted them to look pretty and not like we just slapped labels on.  So I created some cute labels with fonts from the invite.  Anita was kind enough to put up with me a while longer and cut all the labels down and apply them while I was gone.  The label folds over the backside of the envelope and reveals the return address.  The invite was not what I envisioned originally, but everything I wanted it look like.  Love when that happens.