Nadia's 1st Birthday Invitations

Hope you all had a great weekend.  My weekend was filled with gardening but I did get a chance to work on a few cards.  My good friend Beth's daughter (Nadia) is turning one in June.  She is so damn adorable.  I just love kissing on her cheeks.  Her brother (Adian) is also a little looker as well.  Beth and her husband Geoff sure make pretty babies.

Anyway...Beth asked me to come up with a design for some b-day invitations for Nadia (which is Aidan's name backwards).  This is what I came up with.

Nadia - The Birthday Girl

I wanted to go for some neutral vintage colors but had to add a little color (pink) to the card.  I added some Cotton Candy Tim Holtz stickles to the flag and also added pink ribbon and used pink thread for the machine stitching.  Only 24 more invitations to go.

Card Challenges Entered
Alphabet Challenge Blog - Clean and Simple
A Spoon Full of Sugar - Anything Goes
Crafty Catz Weekly Challenge - Anything Goes 
Crafty Sentiments Designs - Children Cards
Creative Card Crew - Cute & Girly
Diva's By Design - One for the Girls 
I Did it Creations Challenge Blog - Anything Goes
If The Shoe fits... Scrap It! - Clean & Simple
Inspire Me Fridays - Anything Goes
Make it Monday - Anything Goes
Night-Shift Stamping - Challenge 67: Monochrom
Really Reasonable Ribbon - Anything Goes
Ribbon Carousel - Clean & Simple
Tuesday Throwdown - Baby/Child 
Truly Scrumptious Challenge - Challenge 57: Anything Goes

Recipe
Cream Cardstock
Nursery Rhyme Cricut Cartridge
Studio G Stamps for the "Join Us.." Tag
Tim Holtz Cotton Candy Stickles
Tim Holtz Distress Ink Pad - Vintage Photo
Machine Stitching
Pink Ribbon

Beth's Baby Shower Card

I spent much of the weekend working on the invitation design for my friend Beth's Baby Shower which I am hosting with our friends Esther and Karina. I'm so excited to meet the new addition to the Lane family. Beth and Geoff's son Aidan is one of the sweetest kids you will every meet. That towheaded kid melts my heart. I know Baby XX Lane is going to do the exact same thing to my heart. 

The Lane's are a great family and a great set of friends that I am happy to include in my extended family. That being said, I wanted to do something special for Beth's invitation.

Before I start talking about the design I came up with, let's talk a little bit about Baby Shower Invitations. It seems that the Baby Shower Invitation market is flooded with an array of pink and blue themes. Don't get me wrong, I like pink and blue...but come on...there are so many other colors out there that you can choose from. Many of the themes of these invitations look like one is throwing a child's birthday party. Baby showers are for the expectant parents....who are adults...not 5 year-olds. I prefer a more elegant, sophisticated design. Don't even get me started on the party themes and favors. That will be saved for a later post.

Invitation Design

I wanted to do something a little different than the classic card opening. I was on the Stampers Pad Tutorial site a few months ago and remembered seeing a tutorial for a Simple Slide Card. I love the Stampers Pad Tutorial site. I recommend anyone interested in stamping checking out the site. It is a great place for beginners and novices. I was thinking that these slider cards would be great for Halloween Cards (which I think will be my theme for 2010). So slider invitations it was.

Now for colors...I love the way greens and purples look together; especially when accented with gold. I had purchased a "Baby" stamp and another stamp that I wanted to use for the invitations last weekend. Yes there was going to be some heat embossing. 

There are several layers on the invitation. I started off with cutting 2 pieces of white card stock to serve as my base. For the first layer, I choose a purple cardstock from Recollections Card Stock for the front and back of the card. These are great for acting as a base for cards because they are very thick. They are pretty plain so I usually jazz them up with some sponge painting. I used the Bazzill Basics Paper Guacamole for the second layer (cut 7"x7"). For the third layer, I wanted to use a designer paper. I went to Micheal's (evil..evil..place) and came across My Mind's Eye paper from 20th Street Market. It was perfect and went with the green and purple theme. I cut one piece a little smaller than the the second layer. Bazzill Basics Paper Lily was used for the fourth layer (cut 6"x6"). I sponge painted some gold streaks on the Lily paper to give it a little color and texture and painted the edges to add some depth.

To accent the fact that this was a baby shower invitation I decided to add some simple tags to the design using the Purple Recollections Card Stock and Bazzill Guacamole Basics Paper cut at 41/2"x3". I used the Bazzill Wild Pansy Paper (cut at 31/2"x2) for the center of the card. I painted the edges of the three tags using some antique gold paint and heat embossed the "Baby" stamp image using gold embossing powder. I accented the card with antique gold beads.

Once I was done with the front of the card, I assembled the front and back of the cards by attaching double sided tape to three sides of the card leaving the side of the card that I wanted the announcement tag to slide from open. Once assembled, I painted the sides of the card using the the same antique gold paint I used for the tags. I punched a hole in the opening side of the card and cut a piece of light purple and sage green ribbon to serve as the "pulley." 

For the tag announcement, I created a tag and used a stamp image heat embossed with gold embossing powder.  I found the font from Urban Fonts for the announcement and accented the announcement tag with a strip of My Mind's Eye paper.