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.

Thomas the Train Birthday Invitation

I decided awhile ago to do a train theme for Grant's birthday and since you really can't get generic train party supplies, or at least I've never seen any, it became a Thomas the Train party.  Let me say this.......I really don't like Thomas the Train.

I was secretly hoping he would pass over the cartoon so I'd never have to see it, but of course that's not the case.  He really doesn't care what I think about it and I decided to put my own dislikes aside and give him the party theme he would love.

Am I a good mom or what? lol

As I did last year for his Mickey themed party I set a $50 budget for the whole party, and quickly realized with this budget I was going to have to do some more improvising with decorations because there was no way I could afford to buy all the Thomas party supplies in the store.  I have lucked out with Grant's Toy Story and Mickey birthdays because I had the Cricut cartridges to do the main decorations.  But what do you know, Cricut doesn't make a Thomas cartridge so I'm on my own.

If I was the kind of person to look on the bright side of things I would see this as a great opportunity to stretch my creativity by coming up with new decorations on my own.......I'm not that person and I much prefer having the Cricut do that grunt work for me.

I did purchase a table cloth from the store with Thomas on it but this is the only Thomas specific item I have bought.  We have a small apartment which makes it nice for parties because the smaller area you have to decorate the less decorations you actually need to make a big impact which in turn means less money spent, and I'm all about that.

I decided to pick 3 colors, blue, aqua, and red and bought streamers and plan on buying balloons in these colors as well.  I had intended to buy some train clipart off Etsy.com I found that actually looks just like Thomas (without the smiling face) for $5, however as with any small budget, cuts had to be made somewhere to allow for other spending and I decided to find Thomas images online and use those instead.  $5 doesn't seem like much in the grand scheme of things but when it comes to a $50 budget that includes food, party supplies, and decorations, every penny counts.

I have only finished the invites for now as most of the decorations will have to be finished the week before the party (October is a super busy month around our house).  I had grand ideas of a really cute train ticket invite with the perfect font and images on it.  Then reality, pregnancy exhaustion, a part time job, and the month of October hit and that idea went down the crapper pretty quick.  Instead I opted for a simple invite printed on white cardstock with the Thomas image I downloaded from the internet and backed it with plain old red cardstock.  I cut the squares of the cardstocks out with my Cricut ( why use an old school paper cutter when you can push a button and watch the Cricut do it for you?).  This invite is similar to the others I've done, which is exactly why I wanted to do something different this time around but maybe next year.

I'm pretty lucky in that everyone I invite lives pretty much on the same road so I didn't bother with envelopes, stamps, or mailing them at all.  Instead I drove down the road and dropped them into their mailboxes.  One thing I hate about invites is the cost of stamps (if I wasn't one of those sentimental people who save cards and invites I would so do e-vites).

Even though these weren't the invitation I had dreamed of, they serve their purpose and I'm really glad they are done.  I guess there comes a point in life when you have to give in and realize you can't do it all.....

I'm just not ready for that yet. haha.                     

Minnie Mouse Birthday Invitation

My niece turned 2 over the weekend and my mom and I decided to have a birthday dinner for her.  The invites were the easiest ones I've ever made.  I used my Cricut and the Mickey and Friends cartridge.  I cut out a plain Mickey head then a bow, used glue dots to adhere them and printed the party info on white cardstock cutting it out in a circle. 

 

It's simple yet so adorable.

About to POP Shower Invitations

In all the pictures I showed in this post about the baby shower, I completely forgot to mention or show the invites.  I made them pretty simple, but I think they were super cute.

 

I cut the circles out with my Cricut of course and stitched them on with my sewing machine.  I did this for 2 reasons.  1- I didn't want to use any more of my glue dots since I was running low. 2-I thought it would add a cute detail.

 

 

Usually when I pick a theme for a party or shower I am overflowed with ideas for invites and just can't decide on one.  However this time every one I saw online was computer generated.  Don't get me wrong they were all cute but just not anything I could duplicate easily.  Hence the simplicity of these invites.

Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Birthday Invite

I have been in birthday crafting mode all week.  I have quite a to-do list but I am determined not to have a repeat of last year, which consisted of me being up until 3am decorating.  I have no desire to do that this year.  So I have quite a few posts coming up full of birthday goodies.  The first being his invitations.  I've had it in my mind how I wanted to do his invites for a while and for whatever reason the procrastinator came out in me and I just got them finished.  I was very thankful I didn't have dozens to do because they took a bit of time.

I used my cricut to cut the Mickey head and attached it to the wrap with glue dots.  To make the wrap I had to measure each of the invites (because I wasn't smart enough to cut them all the same size) and added 1/2 inch seam allowance. 

 

On the invite itself I downloaded the Mickey image from the internet and just created the rest in a word document and printed it on white cardstock.  I stitched the white part of the invite to the colored cardstock, 1. because I didn't want to use any more of my glue dots, and 2. because I thought it would add something different to the invitation.

 

Because these weren't standard sized invitations I ended up having to make custom envelopes.  They weren't difficult, just a little time consuming.  I used a letter scorer (is that what they are called?), you can see it in the right of the photo below.  It came with my cricut supplies, maybe it's a bone folder, either way, doesn't matter.  I put the invite in the middle of my 12x12 cardstock, used a ruler and scored it so it would fold nicely.

 

 

As you can see above I cut the corners out so it would all fit together like an envelope.  Fold in the right and left sides, and fold the bottom up attaching it to the sides with glue dots.

 

 

Then put your invite in and use another glue dot to close the top flap.

 

I'm so thrilled with how they turned out and even more thrilled they are finished.  It feels good to be able to check some projects off my list.