Anniversary Invitations

I recently completed invitations for a friend's 40th Anniversary and vow renewal celebration. I was inspired to make this invite after I saw Becca Feeken's Gent's and Ladies shoe from Spellbinders. The card panel was made using a design I found in Cricut Design Space. It required me purchasing 11x17 paper from Envelopes.com (based on the color combination from my friend's party and the size of the card, which was 6x5).

I cut the background panel and embossed it using my Cuttlebug and the Darice 5x7 Damask embossing folder. I cut the men's shoe from black cardstock and used scraps from the background panel (Paper Source's Stardream Quartz cardstock. This is one of my favorite stores to shop for quality invitation paper and coverstock) for the top layer of the shoe and using a needle inserted black ribbon as laces. For the woman's shoe, I used the Stardream Quartz paper as the bottom and top layer, cut the insole and bow from the red cardstock used for the card base and embellished it with a pearl. I finished the card by adding a strip of silver rhinestone bling. The inside of the card was preprinted and cut to fit inside the panel.

Clothespins have many uses!

Adding ribbon to the top panel of the men's shoe

Grateful I had a needle with an eye big enough to string the ribbon!

I love an assembly line!

Here's the final card

Party Planning

I know you have seen my work in terms of creating cards and invitations. One of my other passions is baking and just putting together a good party. I recently blogged about some invitations for a tropical wedding.  Well, last month I was asked to make the invitations for the bridal shower, a party banner and some favors.

I made the invitations solely from my computer.  Microsoft Word is the medium I use for my invitations, though I use Gimp for my graphics.  The theme for this invitation was the same as the wedding - tropical. Because I knew the color scheme, I was able to work very quickly on creating the background for the invites. This is what it looked like (minus the smudges):

I used Gimp to create the background and purchased my stock images from www.123rf.com. 

The party banner borrowed the same title from the invitation: "From Miss to Mrs."  Using the bride's favorite colors, yellow and orange, I used my Silhouette machine to create the following banner:

I got the template for the banner template from www.birdscards.com and opened it in MTC, resized it, added the letters and cut it using my Silhouette.  The card stock I used for the banner background was leftover paper from the bride's invitations I made a few months back.  I cut out the letters and added pop-up glue dots to give dimension to the letters (see below).

Finally, the favors I made were Oreo cookies dipped in Almond Bark (milk and white chocolate). I followed this recipe in order to put them together. Here's the final product:

If you haven't done so yet, I recommend you visit or join Pinterest. I find a lot of creative ideas for baking, card making and anything else I find myself inclined to want to try. 

This is all for today. Be on the lookout for another posting from me soon. I've been in a creative mode and have lots I want to share.

Ciao!