Fancified Bridal Shower Invitations

Bridal shower invitations, all gussied up with people to invite!

In my opinion, invitation kits are a fantastic base to start out with when creating your perfect invitations.  This instructable gives some ideas on how to personalize your invitation when starting out with a kit.

You can find a wide variety of pre-packaged invitation kits that are printable.  Some ideas on where to look include: Michaels, Target, Staples, Office Depot, Paper-Source, Papyrus, Hallmark.

This is the kit that I found at Mimio in Pasadena. http://www.mimiopapers.com/
The delicate cherry blossoms give a garden type feel which was perfect for the vibe I wanted to give for my planned event.

Then I sort of built from there based on the inspiration I found, grabbing stuff from Blick Art Supplies http://www.dickblick.com/ and some extra pieces from Paper Source http://www.paper-source.com/ 

Ink from Blick, and also green flat cards, white flat cards, green envelopes and cherry blossom paper from Paper Source. (The ribbon came from my giant box o ribbons but I believe I picked it up down at the Flower Market in downtown LA.)

Tools included scissors, pinking sheers, ruler, pen, glue dots, glue stick, calligraphy pen for dipping and removable scotch tape.

Pinking sheers you can get from a place like JoAnne's
Pen you can get from Michael's or an art store.

I already submitted an instructable for DIY Calligraphy.  However, I'll sum up again.

For printing addresses on envelopes, Scotch makes removable tape. This is PERFECT for tacking that flap down to run through the printer smoothly. No paper jams and crumpled envelopes = no tearing out hair and buying more envelopes.

I then took my little acrylic ink and dipping pen and patiently traced over the letters. This takes a little time. However, I love the finished look, and it sort of raises up the letters to give a hint of texture similar to thermography.

for the inside, I sacrificed an envelope to create my template, then traced and cut out envelope liners out of the cherry blossom paper. Paper was then glued to the inside using my glue stick.

Using Adobe Illustrator, I printed my front and back of the invitations. (Not bad considering my graphic designer husband was occupied with other things, so I did this one on my own.) I printed at home on our ink jet printer.

I then used my pinking shears and cut of 1/8" all the way around, mounted the cards (one per side) on green 5x7 card stock using glue dots, and added the "Bridal Shower" tag.

Last of all, I took the remaining cherry blossom paper I had and ripped it into 2" wide strips to create belly bands and finished it off with my pink ribbon.

I really like the rough edging that hand ripping creates vs cutting with scissors.

Hopefully this gave you a couple ideas on how to take a normal kit, and boost it up with a little more personality for your own event.

I really love how these turned out as it gave an awesome vibe for what guests could anticipate for the pending party.  I also included a couple photos of the actual bridal shower setup so you could see how the invites tied in.