Birthday Beer Tour Bonanza: Invitations

This year for my mother’s birthday I decided to do something a little different.  Finding a gift for my mother can be difficult as she is not a material person and would rather enjoy life traveling and experiencing new things.  So I thought the perfect gift would be a tour of three local breweries ending with a home cooked meal, family, and friends…..and of course some beer.  For the beer tour I choose three local brew companies that we would visit and enjoy a tour and tastings.  This concept of a “tour” party can be applied to anything like going to different spas or with food.  An idea that I love is picking a different restaurant for drinks, appetizers, dinner, and dessert!

I designed the card using blues, greens, yellows, and an orangeish red accent.  I went with a map theme mapping out our route to each of our stops.  For the maps I used the same techniques I used here for my wedding maps. 

The three local breweries were the Lift Bridge Brewery, Stillwater Brewing Company (renamed Staples Mill Brewing Company), and Flat Earth Brewing Company. 

Our tour started in Stillwater (where we honeymooned)…..

…….and ended in St. Paul.

Check back in for more décor, favors, and food from the party!  P.S. If you recreate a beer tour themed party make sure you have a sober cab - in our case it was me!

DIY Wedding Revisited: Invitations

You are cordially invited to revisit the wedding of Ann and Reid!  Our wedding anniversary is August 28^th, 2010 and on our anniversary week (okay well technically a week and a half) I wanted share the triumphs and tribulations of a mostly DIY wedding. 

Our wedding invitations were ordered from Exclusively Weddings (after a failed DIY mock up attempt).  We choose the Stylish Wrap Wedding Invitation and we had to face the cold hard facts that for the invitation, RSVP card, AND reception card at $199.95 for 100 invitations was wayyy cheaper than the DIY version.  This was a time when you had to give up your DIY pride and go store bought! 

The wedding invitation sets the stage for the whole day so it’s pretty darn important.  Plus it tells people those pesky details like the date, time, and where the heck they should go.  As you can tell from these invites our wedding colors are light aqua and bright pink.  I know, I am so lucky my hubby let me incorporate pink!         

Even though these invitations included the RSVP card and wedding reception card I still needed a solution for a map.  I wanted to give my guests clarity and piece of mind when it came to directions and where to park.     

Soo…I created a wedding map to round out the set.  The great thing about a pocket fold invitation is that you can add stuff that is not part of the original invitation.       

I was pretty satisfied with my finished map, made on powerpoint from this tutorial, with a couple of hours time and little to no skill! I was able to add little icons to symbolize the church and reception tent as well as incorporate all the colors for the big day.         

Alphabet Baby Shower: DIY Invitations

So…I am officially an auntie! I thought I would celebrate my new nephew’s birth with a series about his baby shower that was 100% DIY including invitations, centerpieces, cupcake toppers, and the big day reveal!

I’m starting out with the DIY invitations, because invitations always set the mood for whatever event or party you are throwing.  The new mommie wanted both an alphabet theme with primary colors so there was a lot to work into the invitations.  On a side note, I forgot that green is NOT a primary color, so it is in there with the mixes of reds, yellows, and blues.  It also helped soften the boldness of those three colors so it was a win win. 

For this project (that makes 60 invites) you need:

• 30 pieces cardstock in white or cream
• 20 pieces colored cardstock – scrapbook sized
• Paper Cutter
• 4 rolls double sided tape (more or less depending on how liberal or stingy you are with your tape)
• 60 envelopes 5.25x 7.25

Firstly, I googled some baby shower invites to get the feel of what I wanted to create including what information I needed to put on the invite, the layouts, and the style.  After a bit of that I designed this graphic:

I choose to use varying shades of yellow, which dipped down into some orange to soften the invitation.  I also used a bolder shade of blue for the first letter of the name and b in “b is for baby” to add some punches of bold, while still keeping the invitation from being too bold that it was overwhelming.  Lastly, I choose gray for the text color to keep everything soft and cohesive.  I figured that the invitation would have to be sized at 6 3/8 x 4.5 inches to make enough room for the boarder.  I originally was going to have just the plain white invitation, but I decided it needed a little somethin’ somethin’ to jazz it up. 

After I printed out 30 sheets of cardstock with the invitation, fitting two invitations to a sheet, I cut them down to size.  I also cut the scrapbook paper backgrounds down to size too at 5 x 6 7/8 inches.

It was pretty simple to assemble the invites after everything was cut and prepped.  I just applied double sided tape to the back of the invitation and stuck that sucker on.

Budget Breakdown:

• Cardstock - $9.90
• Scrapbook Paper $10.00
• Tape $8.00
• Envelopes $5.99 for a 50 pack (I had 10 left over from other projects)

Grand Total (without postage): $33.89