Home-made invites

So, I'm sure a lot of people have had the thought "Wouldn't it be great to make my own invites for this event?" I had just that thought when I  decided to make my own invitations for a spring Tea Party I am having in September. 
What I didn't realise is that making an invite is not like a card or scrapbooked page in one vital aspect; there's more than one, and they're all identical.
Our advice goes thusly:
Keep It Simple, Stupid.
A longer version of this follows.

1. DO NOT buy anything for a set of invites until you have made one complete one that you are happy with.
2. DO buy EVERYTHING to make ALL of your invites at once; you never know when something will be discontinued or if the shops will run out of stock.
3. If you're only making a few (<20 and="and" anything="anything" consider="consider" e.g.="e.g." enough="enough" first="first" font="font" going="going" have="have" if="if" nbsp="nbsp" of="of" s="s" seeing="seeing" stash="stash" there="there" through="through" you="you" your="your">
4. Keep the invite simple and easy to put together; if possible, it should involve you sitting down for approximately 10 minutes per invite. The more invites you have to make, the simpler and less time you should spend on each one.
5. Invites have to fit in an envelope, and usually in the post. Keep them flat.
6. If you want envelopes to fit in a 6" by 4" slot, make them 5&3/4" by 3&3/4" instead
7. If you can't fit all your embellishments AND the words on your invite, consider putting the words on the back, or turning them into cards
8. Have another person help so you can make it more of a production-line

Your best friends;

-embossing folders

-buying die cuts

-stamps

-printers

-Ebay

-thin string

-brads/split pins (one or two looks cute and is easy)

-Simple templates 

-sprays/dyes

-double-sided-tape dispenser

-glue

Worst enemies;

-die cutting

-thick string

-brads/split pins (lots will kill your fingers)

And after all that, my actual invites.
This is the sketch I used (I do sketches both on paper and in Paint):

And this is what I thought my invites would look like:

Only, turns out that the curly bit is quite difficult to cut out with the die over and over and over, and the layered butterfly punch I bought is quite stiff and didn't cut out the first layer of butterflies. So this is how I made my invites instead.

Step 1;
To make the top piece, I cut out white cardstock, then sprayed them with a sparkly yellow mist spray. After they dried, I put it through my cuttlebug in an embossing folder - which I'd inked with green and yellow on one side.
I then cut out slightly larger pieces of a cream cardstock, and distressed and inked all the edges of both pieces with brown ink.

The next step was to stamp on a flower in brown and a vine in green. This was very easy; I highly recommend the use of both mists and stamps in making invites. It was really quick to do and to dry, and looked great.

 

 I cut a border to sit along the bottom of each card to look like a white picket fence. I actually coloured mine in with Tim Holtz Distress inky stuff, though.

Here's where I made a small error in terms of invitation-making. I used thick string, so it made the invite bulky, and I also didn't have enough of the string I was using for all the invites.

The little bird was cut out using a fiskar's punch, which was very easy to use. The little rosebud was similarly easy, I bought a packet and just curled the ends quickly with a set of tweezers. The tags held in with the brad were a little more difficult; I had to die-cut them, but to make it quicker I used a die that had 4 different tags of similar sizes, and used 2 at random on each invite, halving the number of times I had to use the cuttlebug. The invitations' information (not shown) was printed on some pretty shiny paper from the local stationary store with my computer, then cut to size. The ink didn't set properly, so I used some Fixative for pastels, charcoal, chalk and pencil work. If someone has a better ink fixative, please let me know!

Sunday Scrapping

I was going to write an article about how to set up your scrap room and post some photos showing the different incarnations of my scrap room over the last year, but I was struggling a little for inspiration today and my scrap room is really messy! So I thought I would show you some of the pages I have made today, and then next week I will clean and photograph my scrap room and all my nifty storage ideas. 

Today I decided to play around with texture paste which is a really great way of making things more multidimensional. So far I have only used texture paste to make wood-like effects as per the photo below. However I do think I should experiment with other looks that can be achieved with this great product. 

On this layout I used texture paste to get a 3D wood look, and then dribbled white paint over the wood. I also used buttons and butterflies for interest. Unfortunately my computer is playing up so I haven't been able to add photos to any of todays layouts.

  

I also developed a template and inks addiction at scrap camp (thanks to Jo) and I spent the weekend playing with my new templates and an array of ink colours and glimmer mists. In these two layouts I have been experimenting with inks and mists using the running writing template. 

In the above layout I have inked and sprayed the writing template onto the white paper, then used lilac tissue paper with writing paper over the top. I distressed, inked and curled all the edges on this layout to give it an aged look, then I made a small note-holding pocket to tuck into the back of the papers which I will (eventually!) put some journalling on. When my computer is fixed I am going to print a series of small 2x3 images to go in a photo strip down the brown paper strip.

These two layouts are unfinished but I have been experimenting with a clock motif, using a multitude of different products including stamps and templates. I also embossed the photo mounts with a fleur de lis pattern which I highlighted with gold rub'n buff. In the second layout, the clock was already present on the page so I added the hands using chipboard which I inked brown, and UTEE'd the outside of the clock frame. I also added crackle accents onto the clock hands to give it a nice antique look.

Finally, I completed this layout today. Specific elements of interest are the flower vine which was done in gold utee, and the gold and orange embellishment in the corner. I made this embellishment using the shapabilities range cut onto chipboard and with a pearl brad in the centre.

Hope you like these, let me know if you have any questions!