Hugs & Kisses for the Bride!

My youngest daughter, Jackie, is getting married, and the hostesses for her bridal shower party are my oldest daughter, Michele, and my son's wife, Ginger.  They have been very busy for the past month and a half planning the menu for the invitation design, the luncheon, the games and entertainment for the guests, and prizes to be won.  

Ginger came up with a vision of theme for the shower invitations, which she thought would be fun to craft ourselves.  This, or course, is where I entered into the planning as well!   From her ideas of having a gatefold card to use Jackie's wedding colors of black and red, she thought it would be elegant to add a black and white damask patterned paper and add ma wedding dress to the front of the card.  I thought a doily-fold wedding dress would be just right and the "sisters" agreed after they saw my completed dress.  I tweaked Ginger's other ideas here and there and came up with a suggested card design.  It took a lot of collaborating between the three of us before we settled its a final design.  We were all excited to see a sample card putting all our ideas together.

I shopped for supplies, meanwhile deciding to use a larger doily than most of the design instructions that I found on Pinterest, because it was to represented a long wedding gown.  When the sample card was completed and several changes made, we were excited to get together to make up our little beauties to send out to our guests.  I prepared and cut multiple card parts and we were ready for the next step to convene one Saturday morning over a month ago and "whip" out multiple replicas of our sample invitation card.  Michele has made a few cards with me in the past, so she had a good idea that this would not be a one- or two-hour job as Ginger thought.  Much to Ginger's surprise, Michele was very right. . .we needed about five hours to get them all done!

Michele and Ginger planned the luncheon menu and shopped together for ingredients, plus game prizes.  The main course was able to be assembled ahead and frozen until ready to bake.  They got together on another Saturday to complete these task and brainstorm the decorating ideas and games to be played. 

Michele and I have been working on the house and party decorations.  I was happy to lend my papercrafting and computer graphic skills, plus oodles of papercrafting tools to make her ideas become a reality.  It has been an exciting and fun time brainstorming ideas to come up with our finished products!  Once decisions were made on basic ideas, I went to work using my computer skills complete everything from signs for the Mimosa Bar, game instructions to game parts using papercrafting tools.  Once the parts and pieces were designed and printed, Michele and I worked together on at least four different occasions to assemble all the parts.

Last night, after coming home from another night of shower crafting and decorating, it dawned on me that the shower was the next day, and I had not had time to sit down and create a card to go with Jackie's shower gift.  Oh my!  I could see another late night looming!  

I got busy and whipped up this simple card below, which borrows the wedding colors and the bridal shower theme.  For a "short-timer" card.  This is what I call a card that is made with very little time. . .a just get it done card. . .create the design quickly, do it fast. . .no procrastinating allowed.  For the very little time that I had in the wee hours of the morning, I was pretty please with my results.  Also, when the card was finished, I realized it could make a good Valentine's Day card as well.  Jackie always loves almost every card I've ever made, so I'm pretty sure she will like this one too.

Below is a peak at the inside, using the outside theme to create the inside design.  I used my computer to whip up it's little verse.

Recipe:  Stampin' Up cardstock:  Whisper White, Basic Blake, Red Glimmer paper.  Recollections: Black Glitter.  Recollections: Hollywood  & Vine (damask).  MFT Die-namics: Layered Hearts; Photo Corners.  Cottage Cutz die: Hugs & Kisses.  Stash: Offray ribbon. Computer-made verse.  (Size: 5-1/4" x 5-1/4" square).

A Bridal Shower for My Daughter

My youngest daughter, Jackie, is getting married in January.  Sister, Michele, and sister-in-law, Ginger, are planning a shower in November.  One of Ginger's tasks was to decide on the invitations.  She thought it might be just the thing to make homemade invitations.  As the cardmaker in the family, I was invited to participate.

Jackie's wedding colors are black and red, and the "daughters" decided they would follow her colors for the shower theme; thus, the invitations would be black and red as well.  Ginger did quite a bit of research on the web looking at different invitation ideas, but as she has not joined Pinterest, she had no idea what she was missing!  She found lots ready-made card ideas that she thought looked nice, and her search helped her decide that she wanted to incorporate  black and white damask paper and perhaps some red glitter paper.  She sent me several pictures of ready-made invitations that she found of both inside and outside designs.  Her favorite had a bouffant wedding dress on the front and she liked a ribbon band under the invite information on the inside.  She had the idea of the card front meeting in the middle with the bride dress opening on one side in order to see the inside invite.  What she described was a gate-fold card, and it would be easy enough to incorporate that idea.  At this point she turned it over to me to come up with some design ideas.

Over the past few years, I had seen several dress cards using a folded doily, and I thought that might be a good idea, so I went searching on line for some cards incorporating that idea to refresh my memory and also to find a tutorial on how to fold the doily for my wedding dress idea.  The tutorial that I settled on is by Angie Gittles: Paper, Paws, Etc. (dated 5/6/12).  I did some modifications to Angie's instructions, because she uses a 4-inch doily for her dress.  I decided that since my dress was a long wedding dress, that a 6.5-inch doily might be better, and I must say it turned out to be perfect.  I also modified my bodice attachment by not leaving the skirt point down, but using it as part of the anchor for the bodice attachment.  I also trimmed my bodice straight on the bottom and placed it on the front of the skirt over the point because I planned to use a red ribbon sash, which would bury any cut edges.  I also drew a template of the finished dress onto white cardstock and fussy-cut it out to be adhered  over the back side of my dress to hide any raw paper edges and the ribbon sash attachment that would show when it was placed on the gate fold, as part of the back side of the dress shows when the card is opened (how much depends on the angle or amount that overlaps on the opening side).

Though I had a few pieces of black and white damask paper, I did not have enough to make 14 invitations...so shopping I did go!  I was truly surprised at how few pieces of black and white damask there were to choose from, but I did finally find a pattern at Michael's that I thought would be okay.  At first I thought the pattern might be too large, but actually, when the card was finished, I decided it was more than okay!

Ginger, Michele, and I spent the following Saturday making our shower card invitations, and we were totally pleased with the outcome.  We all loved the bit of red glitter paper used and also the cute little sentiment, He popped the question!, which was answered on the inside with,  And she said yes! 

This is the finished inside invitation to coordinate with the outside design.  We were very pleased with the outcome!  (Note: for privacy, I have overlaid a substitute inside without the address or email account.)

Recipe:  SU cardstock:  Basic Black, Real Red, Whisper White, Red Glimmer.  Recollections: Hollywood & Vine Swing Time.  Recollections 6.5-inch White Doilies.  Offray 1/4" red satin ribbon.  SU punches: Full Heart (retired), Artisan Label (retired). EK punch: Scalloped Scallops Border.