Baby Shower: The Invitations

I'm pretty sure that every detail of this shower was Pinterest-inspired. I seriously don't know what people did before Pinterest! How did I plan my wedding without it?! I seriously have no idea... but I'm so thankful for it now :)

The invitations I created are what started the inspiration for the onesie "theme" for the rest of the baby shower. I got so many great ideas from Pinterest, and ended up sort of modifying/adding to some of the ideas I came across to make something that was hand-made, custom and coordinated with baby Gia's sweet little nursery color scheme. Here are some of the pins I used as inspiration...

via 1 (see also), 2, 3

And after a few trips to Michael's for card stock, ribbon, and a paper cutter... and after several classes spent fiddling around on PowerPoint creating the printed text, downloading fonts, and emailing back and forth with the mama-to-be getting a feel for which designs she liked best, this is the invitation I came up with:

After I had the gray card stock printed (at Kinko's so that it was higher quality) and trimmed down to size, I cut light pink heavy card stock sheets to fit the envelopes I bought at Office Depot. I used a little card making paper cutter for a clean edge, and used a glue stick to attach the layers. Because hubbs likes to leave his adjusting table smack in the middle of the office, sometimes it has to double as a craft table ;) 

I got about 5 sheets of assorted pink, black & white patterned card stock in the scrap booking section of Michael's {to match the babe's nursery} and cut lots of mini baby onesies out one Friday night while we watched Dateline...

I sped this process up by folding the paper a few times so I'd get 4 onesies per cut. It was tedious, but since I did it in front of the TV it seemed to go pretty quickly. I cut enough onesies out to have 4 per invitation, and by then I knew I'd be making 30 invitations. After all these little pieces were cut out, I started playing around with placement and arrangement, and then started sticking the onesies on with adhesive dots I found in the scrap booking aisle. The dots are made of foam and raised the onesies up just slightly and this gave the whole invitation a more 3-dimensional look.

I finished off the clothesline look by cutting a small piece of white ribbon and securing it behind the onesies. I just taped the ribbon neatly to the back of the invitation. And that's it! 

The total cost for all 30 invitations was only about $35. I spent approx. $10 on printing (4 invitations/sheet of card stock), $18 on materials (paper, adhesive dots, glue stick, ribbon, and paper cutter - obviously will be able to re-use some of those), and $8 on envelopes.

Danielle loved them and people commented on how cute they were in every single RSVP I got :) All the great feedback was the best compliment I could have hoped for! Ordering similar handmade invitations would have easily cost 2-3x what I spent... and I had so much fun making these!

Easy, inexpensive, DIY... and these were just the start! When I get a free minute this week I'll show you up-close and w/ instructions some of the other fun DIY things I used in planning this par-tay!