{ashlee + stephen's wedding invites}

{adorable save the date photo by www.bvaphoto.com}

I recently got the chance to create Ashlee's & Stephen's wedding invitation suite (you might remember seeing a sneak peek right here).  Ashlee's wedding is taking place in early September and based off our conversations about her vision, I was inspired to create her invite designs based around an idea of a laid back yet glam summer dinner party.  The wedding ceremony and reception will be outdoors at an estate on a golf course in Northern California with touches of black, white, silver & cabana stripes.  I absolutely love how these turned out so I thought I would share them with you today.  And don't forget to go check out Ashlee's blog that she recently started!

{terra's mint+ fuchsia bridal shower invite}

Next weekend, my girlfriend Terra will be having her bridal shower in Southern California.  Her aunts graciously offered to throw her shower, but I couldn't help forcing myself into the paper goods situation by offering to do the invites.  Terra gave me the freedom to do what I wanted with the invites- her only request being that I use some pink since she wont be incorporating the color too much into their upcoming summer wedding. 

Sometimes it is much more difficult to focus in on a design when someone gives you carte blanche rather than being overly specific about they want, but luckily I stumbled upon this fabulous fuchsia zebra paper from Paper Source which served as the inspiration for the entire invite as well as the envelope lining.  

I absolutely love a double sided invite that leaves a little mystery when the guest first pulls out the invite from the envelope so I kept the front of the invite ambiguous with a simple "you're invited" placed upon a minty striped background.  Using the bright fuchsia as the color for all the text, I decided to keep the main information on the back of the invite simple with a fun mix of Luella font and Reina font on a plain white background.   I tied all the colors together by printing the guest's addresses in fuchsia and the host's return address in mint on the envelope flap. 

I am so happy with how these turned out- especially the unexpected zebra paper!  I love that they still feel girly and fun, but really capture a less traditional feel for a bridal shower invite. 

If you are looking for custom paper goods design, you can contact me through my etsy shop to get some pink zebra action for yourself!

{gold confetti invitations}

One of the most visited posts on this blog is the DIY gold confetti artwork that I posted over a year & half ago! Inspired by that popular post, I have added these new gold foil confetti invitations to my Etsy shop.  I'm pretty much in love with everything these invitations have going on.  With a little bit of sparkle, some confetti and a pretty script font what's not to like?!  The photos show them used as a wedding save the date, but the design really works well for almost any event like a birthday or bridal shower! 

Check out the new listing here!

{diy bridal shower projects + free printables}

Today I have one of the last posts about my bridal shower with a guest post from one of my best friends, Kay Lee, who envisioned the entire event and executed every last detail with perfection.  She's here today to share some great free printable downloads that can translate for any of type of party as well as some insight into a few of the diy projects she created for the shower. Take it away Kay...

Natalie is my personal sounding board for everything related to parties and design, so it was painful not being able to bounce around any of my ideas for the shower with her.  However, knowing how much we both love events and design, it was a thrill to create this feminine little shower with a touches of peach, grey, burlap and lace for one my dearest friends. 

The burlap garland was actually a last minute addition to the bridal shower. I laid out everything the night

before and felt like the mimosa table was missing something, so I whipped up this project just in case. 

I'm so glad I decided to do it because I think it created a cohesive look between the mimosa table and

the nearby burlap table runners. For a six-foot garland (as pictured above), I used one yard of burlap and 

adhered it with hot glue to a piece of ribbon. Click the following to download a template

 for the burlap banner cut-outs:

Burlap Garland Template Printable

One of the few requests that we had from Natalie was to include some sort of champagne cocktail 

at the shower, so we set up a "make-your-own" mimosa bar. If you'd like more information for

the set up of a mimosa bar, check out this great post from Camille Styles. Although the mimosa 

bar itself was pretty self-explanatory, I printed up some cute instructions on 100lb kraft paper cardstock. 

Here is a link to download the instructions:

Make You Own Mimosa Printable

Natalie's mom generously supplied bottles of champagne to give as favors for the guests. I printed "thank you" tags on 100lb kraft paper and then cut out the "tag" shapes. I punched a hole at the top of each one 

and applied reinforcement stickers then looped them around the bottles with bakers' twine. 

Here is a download to make your own:

Thank You Tag Printable

I knew I wanted the placecards to match the invitations for the shower, so I used the same

 banner design and just printed them on tented cards. Here is a template download for the place cards:

Banner Place Card Printable

These are the invitations I designed for the bridal shower, which served as a jumping off point 

for the rest of the decor. They are available for purchase here.

You can see additional photos from the shower here & here.

{our diy wedding invites}

 I have been dying to share our wedding invites for months now.  Wedding invitations are truly a long process and even longer when you decide you are going to try to do the whole thing yourself! We started talking about the main idea for our invites back in November, but started seriously working on them in January and finally were able to send them out late last week!

We always knew we wanted to do some sort of illustration on our invites, something that we could also use on additional paper goods at the wedding.  I asked one of the talented artists at my work to help us out and with our direction, he did an amazing job illustrating a crest for us- especially capturing our Boston Terrier, Muji!  Since he put the entire illustration into Photoshop, we will be able to modify the crest by adding or deleting elements or revising the text so that we can use the graphic for things after the wedding.

I special ordered the 6.5 inch square Kraft envelopes through this Etsy shop, they have the ability to make custom envelopes in a variety of colors/shapes at what I consider to be an unbeatable price- ours were only 60 cents each!  I had an incredibly hard time finding kraft paper envelopes with a pointed flap rather than a straight across closure like the ones we used for our engagement party invites which is why we ended up going custom.  We then lined the envelopes with black/white striped paper which we created ourselves and printed onto normal copy paper.

The main invite wording was by far the most difficult and time consuming part for us.  Getting the design, fonts and wording just right so that it would look modern and fun, but also sit well alongside the more intricate crest illustration proved to be a challenge.  Fonts are especially one of those things that I could literally spend hours messing with so I thought it would be helpful to outline exactly which fonts we used as well as where you can find them for download:

FONTS USED:

wording in crest: Copperplate Bold

cursive font in invite: commercial script

Natalie: Reina

Christopher: Ostrich Sans Black

address on main envelope, reply envelope & return address on flap: Ostrich Sans Regular

date on invite & "directions": Otama

After we finalized the main invite wording and design, we formatted it with the crest to be printed onto a 6 inch wide by 18 inch long piece of 110lb cardstock which would be folded twice to make three 6 inch square "panels."  We had the invites and the double sided directions printed at Columbia Printing in downtown LA, these are the same people who printed our save the dates.

For the reply cards, we choose to use the white 4-bar sized envelopes from Paper Source which we lined in Kraft paper.  We then whipped up a simple reply card and printed it ourselves which I thoroughly regret doing- not because they look bad or were particularly difficult to print, but simply because Columbia Printing is so insanely reasonable and we should have just asked them to print/cut these as well.  The reply card and the 4.5 inch square map are secured in a diagonal slit in the third "panel" of the main invite.

Based on the main invite design, I also created similar labels for our return address printed on the pointed envelope flap and the main address printed on the reply envelope.  Figuring out how to format this to print correctly in our printer took every last piece of my patience, but in the end I think the cohesive look was well worth it.  So long as you have a printer with a top loading rear-feed tray you will be able to print on your own envelopes.

{the spoils of envelope lining}

While I am by no means an expert, I am more than happy to help with any additional questions you might have about making your own wedding or event invites - feel free to contact me!

{plaid party invites}

One of my favorite parts of hosting a big party at our place is designing and sending out real invites.  Our plaid party is coming up and I knew I wanted the invites to be simple, but still quirky and fun.  I took a lot of inspiration from this image on Pinterest and whipped up this invite using some fonts from dafont.com.  The envelopes were purchased on amazon and I used the leftover Kraft sticker sheets from our Save The Dates for the envelope address wraps.  We normally print out the invites ourselves as well, but Columbia printing did such a great (and reasonable!) job on our Save the dates that we went back to them for these as well.   

{save the dates}

Last weekend we sent out our save the dates!  Anytime we get to check something big off of the wedding checklist, I feel extremely accomplished.  After our engagement photo session, I had a very good idea of what I wanted to the save the date cards to look like.  Chris and I designed these together and got them printed at a local printer in downtown LA.  The envelopes are from Paper Source and come in a variety of colors and do not require any extra postage despite the weird size!  I have been really loving the look of kraft paper ever since we used it for the envelopes when making our engagement party invites. This time around we used full sticker sheet kraft paper for the envelope address wraps.  Label outfitters makes sticker kraft labels in a variety of sizes available here.