Western Baby Shower Invitations

My cousin is pregnant and due almost exactly 2 weeks before me.  This is her 3rd and her other 2 are already in school so quite an age gap between them.  I told her years ago if she ever decided to have a 3rd I wanted to be the one to do her baby shower.  Little did I know we both would wind up pregnant at exactly the same time.  I still offered to do her shower because I'm one of those crazy weird people that enjoys doing them.

She is having a boy and requested a western/country themed shower. As I usually do I scoured the internet for ideas and bounced back and forth on colors and images up until the holidays hit and then it all hit the back burner and now the shower is a week  away and I'm seriously needing to craft for this party.

The difference between this baby shower and the others I've done is 1. its right smack after Christmas which puts a kink in finances and 2. I'm having a baby too which puts a kink my energy to craft and throw such a party.  That being said I'm still excited to be doing it and have come up with some ways to make things easier and more cost effective for myself.


I chose blue and red for the colors.  I went back and forth on the this forever and it really was the most difficult part of the shower for me to nail down and make a decision.  There are so many color combinations I love but in the end I thought blue and red would be the easiest for me to find and match up in fabric, ribbon, and scrapbook paper.  I'm really trying to go for western simplicity with this shower, not only to make things a little easier for myself but also because I think a lot of times people (me included) can go overboard with decorations and such.  I tend to over think things and having the mentality of simplicity helps me keep things in check.



As always. I'm made the invites.  I figured out months ago what I wanted them to look like and used blank cards already in my stash.  I found the rocking horse image online, saved it into my images, opened it in Microsoft paint, then erased the wording and printed them in a Microsoft works word document. 

I used my cricut and the Accent Essentials cartridge to cut the images out into a circle shape, then cut another circle 1/4 inch larger circle in blue and red (because I ran out of blue paper) to go behind the rocking horse image and to add a little bit more color.  I had originally wanted 1/2 inch red gingham ribbon but I procrastinated, then a snow storm hit, then the flu hit, then Hobby Lobby was closed.  I ended up having to go to Joann's which of course they were out of the 1/2inch and I was forced to get the 1/4inch ribbon.  It still worked fine but I really wanted something a little wider.  Oh well, I guess no one else will know the difference.  I attached the ribbon, scrapbook paper circle, and rocking horse image with glue dots.

I have had this post ready for about a week now except for a photos but for whatever reason blogger isn't letting me upload my second one and I'm a little tired of trying.  So there is no photo of the inside of the invite. I printed the invitation info on white cardstock using font's from dafont.com.  I downloaded 2 different ones I thought looked western.  I used my cricut and the Don Juan cartridge to cut them out then used glue dots to stick them to the inside of the cards.

The inside read: A little cowboy is on the way
                           Let's celebrate before the big day
                           Join us for a baby shower honoring
                             (enter guest of honor name)
                             (enter party details of time, place, etc)

Other than the size of ribbon these turned out exactly as I wanted.  I was going for simplicity which I think I found and I'm so relieved they are finished and mailed. 


Now on to the other projects on my list.