Sometimes You Just Have to Play in the Rain

Kieran was so, SO freaked out by the thunder last night. Once it simply became rain my dear husband headed out to the deck to watch it fall. Kieran, of course, wanted to follow Daddy and headed outside to check on his toys...

All right, here's my wagon

Excuse me, Mom, but my wagon is going this way

All right, it should be good there. Now where's my ball?

He only came inside because we made him. Oh, he was Not Happy. After all, sometimes you just have to play in the rain.

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Here at Caffeinated Papercuts, we don't expect you to ever gave a problem with any of our products. If, however, something does go wrong, fear not; our highly trained customer service department is ready to take your call!*

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Party Hat Invitations

As I wave goodbye to over 100 cards heading out to a craft show in Vermont, I finally have time to start crafting for myself again (and blogging about it!). Hard to believe that a year ago this time I was very pregnant and now I'm planning my son's first birthday party! Where has the time gone?!?

Naturally I'm taking on the task of making the invitations myself (the joys & trials of being a paper crafter) and inspiration struck when I saw the latest email from Scrapbooks Etc. featuring this card which shall now be referred to as the inspiration card. I loved the playfulness of it and headed off to the craft store to recreate it.

My original plan was to stay very close to the inspiration card - polka dot paper, bumbles on the bottom, button top. Hah! Not only could I not find polka dot paper but the cost of the bumbles was obscene. I'm only doing 20 invitations, but when one spool of bumbles costs $3.50 and only gets you 4 cards...um, NO. As I stood there fretting over what to do now, my husband looks at me and says "how about plain paper and fun ribbon?" Well heck, why didn't I think of that?!? Creative burnout, that must be it...did I mention the 109 cards?

So off my genius husband and I went to the ribbon aisle (I showed him where it was, regaining some crafty points) and he found a cute spool of polka dot ribbon. We took it back to the scrapbook paper aisle where he picked out some dark teal paper to complement the ribbon, handed it all to me and said "here, do your thing!" Ok, he also created a template out of scrap paper I had printed coupons on so we could figure out how many cards we could get from each 12"x12" sheet and what was a good size base card. It's nice to have a husband who can think creatively, too.

The rest, however, was now up to me. Raiding my mother's button collection (this is a perfect craft for all those buttons you have laying around!) I now had the last ingredient I needed for some adorable party invitations.

What I used:

• dark teal 12"x12" card stock
• yellow 12"x12" card stock
• green 12"x12" card stock
• spool of polka dot ribbon
• spare buttons no more than 3/8"
• 1-1/2" circle punch
• Cricut to make the number 1's (from George & Basic Shapes, 2" tall)
• chalk to ink the edges 
• adhesive
• paper cutter and/or scissors
• word processing software to create the wording

My first step was to create the actual invitation wording for the party. For this I used Publisher, created a new page size, and added a triangle shape to stay inside of. I didn't want the wording to fill the entire inside of the card, so I made it about 1/2" smaller than the card. After setting up my shape it was a simple matter of staying inside the lines, choosing colors that complemented the card design, and printing them out on white card stock. I was able to get four invitations to a page which was great. Using as little paper as possible always makes me happy.

Those swirlies are me preventing party crashers...;) I printed this one on scrap paper which is why it looks, well, blah.

Now it was time to start making the party hat. Taking the teal card stock I cut the sheets into four 6"x6" squares. The square was then folded on the diagonal making a triangle, but not the type of triangle I wanted.

Using the point on the unfolded side I drew a line across the bottom and cut off the extra. Now it looks like a party hat!

Next I inked all the edges and the crease on the hat. You don't have to do this, but I'm an edge-inking addict and couldn't help myself.

While the edges dried I set up my Cricut to start cutting number 1's out of the yellow card stock. With the machine cutting away I set to work punching out circles. Amazingly enough they were done pretty fast and I inked all those edges before setting them aside. What, I told you I'm addicted...

Next was cutting the ribbon into lengths. I made each strip just a little larger than the bottom of the card to leave room for trimming it down to the angle of the card. My buttons didn't need anything (I decided not to make that huge, crazy bow) so now I was ready to start assembling!

Taking my card I attached the invitation wording to the inside with my adhesive.

Back on the front of the card I added the ribbon along the bottom and trimmed the ends to the shape of the card.

The circle went in the middle with the number on top. Adding the button on the top point I was done!

Hmm, now where did that number 1 go...?

Just 19 more to go...best part is that now the card fits nicely in a standard envelope, so no added postage!

Had I stuck with the bumbles on the bottom as in the inspiration card, something tells me they wouldn't have survived the post office.

Let me know if you try this yourself - I'd love to see pictures! Happy Crafting!