Evie’s 2nd Birthday Party

I love playing with paper and paper products. Every year, except this one, I make handmade Christmas cards to send out to family and friends. So, naturally, I want to do the same for Evie’s birthday invitations. I’ll do it as much as I can until she asks for Dora invitations or something else.

So, how do I start out? I think about the cool things I have that I want to use. I have a really cool doily punch by Martha Stewart so I started thinking about how I could use that to incorporate into the invitations. So, I punched a strip of white paper on 2 sides to make a doily strip. I used an almond colored paper for the base of the card, but also wanted to add some ‘girly’ pinks or other colors. Ok, I cheated on the writing here. I used a cool set of alphabet rubber stamps on the lace strip to say ‘Peek a boo, look who’s turning.’  Then I hand cut the number ‘2’ out of Japanese origami paper, and added the flower. 

I printed out the words of the invitation on a white paper to insert inside the invitation. I used the doily punch on the top and bottom edges and added a cute little photo of her and tied it all together with some string.

Done, mailed them out.

Next up, the cupcake picks. I remembered that I had bought some cool doily stickers at Big Lots last year. I had intended to use them in the design of a wedding invitation suite that I did last year, but the bride wanted to go in another direction, so I have a bunch of them. I just needed to find them in my, let’s just say, temporarily disorganized studio. I figured the best way to find them was to start putting stuff away, and it worked. Just as I was about to give up, ta da! they were found.

I used a 1.5 inch scallop punch in the almond paper, topped that with a pink circle, the doily sticker on top of that and the final touch, a gem in the middle. Glued them to sticks. Done. Note: I was asked a question on how I attached the sticks. First, they are kabob skewers that I cut into thirds or approx. 3 inches long. I used a hot glue gun to attach them and did not have something on the back to cover them. As an option you could do that if they were going to be viewed from both sides.

Last year I had wanted to make a window banner, but time ran out, we had a death in the family and her party was very small, so it got skipped. More time this year, so I had to come up with something to match the rest of the paper products.

I went to one of my favorite scrapbook stores, Archiver’s, and bought a package of 10 scalloped edge 5 inch circles. I cut a 4.5 inch circle of the almond paper. Then, at another favorite store, JoAnn’s, I bought 4 inch paper lace doilies and layered it all together. I punched a bunch of white scalloped edge circles and then did brush lettering on each individual one. I didn’t think ‘Happy Birthday’ would fit, so I opted to write ‘Evie is 2’  The space between the words have a stamped flower and a paper flower on top of that. Lastly I punched holes in each side of the large scallop and tied them all together with 1/4 inch organza pink ribbon, added long tails on each end to hang across the window.

Luckily, I had almost all of the paper products that I used, saving me some $. All I bought were the large scallops, paper lace doilies and some ribbon. Today I re-purposed the leftover cupcake picks to use on the thank you notes that I need to write. I had fun making all of these and hope I can catch up on my scrapbooking and use all these fun items for her 2nd Birthday page.

Evie antics: She had the most fun with the helium balloons and the puzzle that her grandma sent from Georgia.

In the studio: For the thank you notes, I had a whole box of small envelopes that had gotten moist and the flaps were sealed. I didn’t want to toss the whole box so, I sent a question out to my calligraphy friends on Facebook to see if anyone had some advice for salvaging them, besides steaming. I steamed a few open, but it was tedious, time consuming and dangerous with the hot steam. The envelopes also look a bit worn from the process. One of the ideas that was sent to me was to put them in the freezer for 24 hours. I was excited to try this as I thought it might work. Sadly, I just took one out and tried to get the flap unstuck, it sort of worked. Parts of it came undone, but the rest tore. Not the result I wanted, but hey, worth a shot. I’ll try the steaming with a hot iron and damp cloth next, but if that doesn’t work, they will be tossed.

Thanks for reading. Jen