As you will all learn in our time together, I tend to go a little over the top when it comes to my girls’ birthdays. To be fair, I’ve only had to deal with Nola’s, but I already have a theme in mind for Sophie’s (a post for another time).
Any way – this year our theme is The Wizard of Oz! Nola loves that movie and we thought it would be a really fun theme to bring to our backyard. After searching for the perfect invitation inspiration, I realized I was going to have to create this from scratch. Everything I found was either way too fancy (think wedding/engagement party), too kiddie (think cartoon characters), or based on the book version of the characters – which Nola would not recognize. So, I set off to master an invite that was both accurate and not too intense for a 3 year old’s birthday party.
What I created was a combo of printed 5×7 cards and some Cricut magic. Nola has a hardcover Wizard of Oz book with the perfect cover art for the invite. After a little Googling, I was able to find a match without the 75th Anniversary sticker. The next problem to tackle was making the yellow brick road look like it filled the entire invitation. Luckily, I’m a copy/paste master! I wasn’t too concerned what the middle of the card looked like, since I knew it would be covered with the insert, so I copied the very bottom of the picture, cropped out the grass, and pasted it a few times over to create a curve in the road! Without the insert, you can CLEARLY see my copy/paste job…but it’ll all be covered!
Once I knew what the background was going to look like, I started to build the insert. I used 3 bracket shapes in slightly different sizes to give it some depth. The bottom layer is some Recollections glitter cardstock in Cherry. I found the glitter didn’t rub off and create an unwanted glitter bomb in the envelope. The middle layer is just a patterned filled shape that I print and cut and the top layer is just white cardstock. Once everything was cut, I glued the white and blue layers together with regular glue and used heavy-duty glue dots to mount those to the glitter layer. I used also used the dots to mount the whole thing to the background. I didn’t want it to move once it was mailed! The finishing touch was a little Toto in the corner.
I’m super happy with how they turned out! They’re different from anything I found online AND they set the stage for the rest of the party!
Next on the hit parade…custom printed envelopes! Let the Cricuting begin!
FONTS: LD Oz and Imprint MT Shadow (this came pre-installed on my computer, so check yours before downloading).
Rina's Workshop 