It’s her party and we’ll DIY invitations if we want to. You would DIY them too if it happened to you if you were us. After all, our wedding invites were homemade…
… so how could we phone it in for our daughter’s first birthday party? Even though much-more-talented-invitation-designers like Mrs. Limestone generously offered to lend a hand (so nice), we stubbornly set out to attempt to create our second party invitation ever on our own (well, with the help of a cute baby and a computer). I guess we just have a thing for doing it ourselves (ya think?).
So we started out with a very familiar set-up to our weekly Clara photos like these (see how we make them here)…
… which look a little something like this when they’re not all small and tiled like the ones above:
Except this time we just placed Clara in her usual white onesie on basic white fabric (a plain white bed sheet that we already had on hand):
Since Clara’s weekly photos have become somewhat of a theme for her first year of life, we decided to borrow the idea to introduce her big one year old b-day bash in the form of an invitation (her whole party will have a colorful fabric and number theme inspired by her weekly photos, so the invite really sets the tone). The main difference from other weekly pics was that this particular photo required more Photoshop work than most, because we basically created the “fabric” from scratch (since you’re not likely to find fabric with specific party details on it at your local craft store).
I’ll spare you the Photoshop play-by-play (in short: we added type, reduced the opacity so it looked more like it was printed on the fabric, rasterized it so we could erase whatever was “under” Clara, and added some asterisks for “pattern”). Here’s the final result (minus a few private details that have been blurred):
We originally intended it to be all text – just the party details by themselves as the “pattern” behind her. But it felt a bit empty, so we added the colored asterisks.
PS: How awesome is it that her actual birthday falls on a Saturday? Well planned, universe.
As for printing the invite (since you can’t put a stamp on a JPG), it actually took a bit of hunting. We didn’t want to print them at home (or a place like CVS) on photo paper because we wanted a more matte stationery effect (like a real invite as opposed to a picture dropped in the mail). And although we did print our wedding invites at home on cardstock, we worried that printing a more image heavy design like this at home might yield subpar results since they wouldn’t look as crisp and bright as a professional job. So we looked into an online service that could print them for us cheaply but better than we could at home (you’d be surprised how many of those go-to sites for invites and holiday cards don’t give you the option to print something entirely of your own design). Fortunately we stumbled upon Winkflash.
We opted for the 4.25 x 6″ postcard option (in the middle of the bottom row in the screenshot above) because we thought a postcard invite would be a fun twist, plus it would give us the chance to write a personalized message on the back of each one in scribbly kid handwriting “from Clara.” We figured that wasn’t asking for a hand cramp since we’re only sending out about a dozen invites (it’s virtually a family-only party of about 20 people total). But we ordered an even 20 invites just so we’d have some extras for posterity (and the baby book, the hallway frame wall, etc).
The best part was that by googling around for an online coupon code, we scored 60% off (!!) of our order. So the grand total with shipping came down from over 20 dollars to $10.11, which factors out to around 50 cents per invite. Not bad (and possibly cheaper than ink and paper for home printed cards would have been). As for the coupon code, we ordered them a couple of weeks ago, so we can’t guarantee that the “cards60” code is still working, but it did the trick for us.
But that savings must’ve impaired our judgment (call it “discount goggles” if you will) because we realized after receiving our order that postcards don’t always survive a trip through the mail in great shape (no offense, USPS) – especially when they’re white. And since we thought the grandparents might want to hang on to Clara’s invite without any dark smudges or folds, a jacked-up postcard just wouldn’t do.
No biggie though, we just hunted down some envelopes that would shield our postcards on their harrowing journey to nearby VA and even to NY and beyond. It was a bit tough due to the weird postcard size, but eventually we did find a set at Target that would work (for just $4). The funny thing is that the envelopes came packaged with some pre-designed party invites. The invite theme? Tools. How funny is that? Maybe we should’ve just used those in the first place. Except that we’re too DIY obsessed to use DIY themed (but not actually DIYed) invites. Go figure.
Even though our postcard was more like a traditional flat invite now, Clara (aka Sherry’s shaky left hand) still wrote some personalized messages on the back.
The invites went out a little over a week ago and have already been received by all – and they seem to be a hit. Woot. We’re psyched that we did it all for a grand total of under $20 (which includes postage, envelopes, and custom printed postcards) – which would have been what we paid for the printed postcards alone had we not found that lucky 60% off coupon code online before ordering. Thanks google.
What a fantastic idea! I halfway DIY-ed my wedding invites and have DIY-ed all party invites, but this is the best idea I’ve seen yet! I love it (and that fabric…how great)!
Saw your website in the Washington Post.
For the future: http://www.usps.com/createmail/welcome.htm You can make postcards from USPS and mail them right from your computer (so no envelopes; addresses uploaded in an Excel spreadsheet). We used this service for our wedding save-the-dates. The front of the postcard was a photo of Rodin’s The Kiss that we took in Paris a couple years before. A little photo editing, it looked great.
So cool! Thanks so much for the tip!
xo,
s
That is ridiculously cute – you guys are inspiring!
Happy First Birthday, Clara!
They are adorabable! You guys are going to remember this party forever. (As for the rest, you’ll kind of remember them in a hazy-like fog. ha ha)
My kids are 7 and (almost) 5 and I still always DIY their parties. The latest invitation is for my daughter’s Superhero birthday party: I made invitations where the recipients have to *scratch off* like lottery tix. (It was a big hit among the 5 year olds and the moms.)
Tool cool! How did you do that?!
I know, such a cool concept! Do tell.
xo,
s
That is awesome!!!
Much love,
Future Mama
http://expectingablessing.blogspot.com/
Love it all! It all looks so absolutely wonderful :)
I’m sorry — what do you mean by “rasterized it so we could erase whatever was ‘under’ Clara”? What is that? How is it done?
It’s a menu option in Photoshop. You go to “layer” and down to “rasterize” and select “text” and it’ll then no longer be type-editable (it becomes a rasterized shape that you can erase). Hope it helps!
xo,
s
There’s no need to rasterize the layer in Photoshop. You can add a layer mask to editable text and paint black on the layer mask to “erase” the letters/letter portions you don’t want.
True dat. Lots of ways to skin the cat when it comes to PSD. Haha.
xo,
s
I just like the word “rasterize!” Sounds like it could be a superhero exclamation.
Hahah. Love it. I want to go rasterize some villains now.
xo,
s
Just on an off note: there is an application called Rasterbator where you could enlarge any print that you upload…They have some bery cook ideas on their website!
Rasterize the text! Of course! Although now that I saw the comment about the layer mask, I’ll probably go that route, but still. I never would have thought to do it either way.
(I love it that I pop in here for design ideas, and get a little PS trick too. Happiness is learning something new in Photoshop :) )
LOVE that fabric! Definitely stealing that idea!
This is so awesome! I love how to DIY’ed the fabric and all!
LOVE THE FABRIC YOU MADE!! Its perfect!
Plus I love that I now have the name of this site to make my own personalized fabric!
Love the invitation! But that fabric is freakin’ awesome! Now I want to see if I can create something like that for my daughter. Can’t wait to hear about her party!
WOW I feel like I’ve seen her grow over the year *tear*. Love the DIY cards.
A Girl’s Next Best Friend
What a good idea. I love “Whinkflash” .But unfortunately I live in Istanbul, Turkey and in there, there is not like this application:(
This is so cute! Hope everyone has a great time at your party and congrats at being such good parents for a whole year! Also that fabric is too awesome!
Love the invite!
I’m going to check out wink flash for when we print our wedding invites.
a) you’ve inspired me to mercilessly search for discount codes (used one yesterday to print photos at CVS)
b) the fabric rocks and i giggled out loud (at work) when i read on BabyCenter that you might make a *bean* bag chair. i mentally said, “oooh because they call her bean/beanette!” yeah. doesn’t take much to amuse my tuesday. can’t wait to see how special her party turns out!
Haha, yup. Every bean deserves a beanbag chair, right?!
xo,
s
Thanks for the Winkflash link. I usually use Staples or Fedex for printing invites. Does Winkflash put their logo on the back like Vista Print?
Oh good question. We were surprised but there was no logo on the back (just a postcard line since we chose the post card layout). I think you can see it in the pic where I scrawled a little message “from Clara.” Hope it helps!
xo,
s
I’ll have to remember that website!
Vistaprint also has awesome deals, especially if you sign up for their email list ahead of time. We got 100 save the dates for our wedding… for $18 (including the cost of shipping.)
Woah- that’s an amazing deal! Thanks for the heads up!
xo,
s
Definitely join their email list. I get deals all the time. I printed all of our 1,300 wedding proofs through them and @ .06 cents per photo at the time of their deal, that is $78, plus taxes and shipping I believe. So for under $100 I was able to print all of our digital photo’s and make our own photo album at home for so much less.
Ditto on the VistaPrint – once you order one thing, you’ll receive regular emails with coupon codes for ie: 100 postcards free (!). All you have to pay is shipping. I order postcards from VistaPrint for Christmas, our upcoming wedding, and even stuff for my shop, and I usually pay about $3 total – for shipping.
To get matte cardstock, about $9.50 is added to your order. It’s a great deal!
Perfect~ as always….. love you guys to pieces!!!!!
Clara’s birthday is the day after mine! (mine is a Friday 13th this year, how weird is that). I love how you created your own invites and that the envelopes came with the diy theme invites haha. Too funny.
The invitation and fabric are awesome! What a great idea. Clara is going to have such wonderful memories to look back on when she is older!
Ca-ute! Love the fabric, what an awesome idea! Our daughter turns one in July and I can’t wait to make her invites!
So impressive!! Nice job! I noticed the Clara fabric on your gallery reveal on yesterday’s post. :)
Oh yeah- we framed the test swatch! We figured we gotta use every stitch of that cute fabric one way or another. Haha.
xo,
s
Those are so cute!
i just wanted to say that i absolutely LOVE ya’lls website! i’ve always said that if there was ever a job where you got paid to just look and ooh and aah over other peoples houses and decorations, i would!
but more than all your decorating ideas and fabulous-ness, i love all of your baby and clara ideas! my due date is actually today for our first baby, a girl as well, and there are sooo many things that you’ve done that i want to do as well! i hope you guys truly believe that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery because i can’t wait to imitate all the little things you’ve done for our little emma! thank you!
Oh my goodness! Big day!!! Congrats on your impending bean! I bet she’ll come on the 21st. That’s my guess. Haha.
xo,
s
Super cute invites, and what a great idea with the fabric. Can not wait to see pics from the party!!
Y’all did a fantastic job with the invites! Can’t wait to see how the whole party comes together :)
We love Winkflash! When it comes time to make Clara’s book – keep an eye out for their flat rate books deals. I got an 8×10, 100 page full color bleed book for under 20 bucks. Such a professional looking gift! :)
– A loyal Winkflash order-er
Such a clever idea — stashing away for our next event. And LOVE the fabric! Clara is a lucky, lucky little girl.
Those are adorable, but I have to say, I can’t believe you turned down help from Mrs.Limestone herself!! I covet her invitation making prowess.
I know. It took every single ounce of willpower that we had. Haha. Her stuff is amaaaaaazing!
xo,
s
The invites are so cute! I have had the same problem but never hunted around long enough to find a good place to print them. I love designing stationary so this would be the perfect solution! And the fabric is ridiculous. Ridiculously cute of course. I can think of a million ways to use it which means you’ll think of 2 million!
Okay, I thought I was the only crazy one that wrote things with my left hand… but I give my husband cards from our cats. They each have a distinct handwriting- Macky’s messages are written with my left hand, Mowie’s are signed with hearts over the i’s and Darwin usually puts letters backwards.
Nevermind, I think I just out crazied you ;)
Hahahahahahaha, I love it. Don’t worry I’m guilty too. Clara and Burger are both my left hand, but Burger always writes R’s backwards.
xo,
s
Haha I do this, too! But I’ve not been clever enough to give each cat his own handwriting. Love it!
So sweet! Love the invite…can’t wait to see all the details for her party. I know it will be a hit!
Love the invite! And thanks for the suggestion to try out Winkflash. I’m definitely going to check them out for our next party. Time to refresh my Photoshop skills!
I love the Clara fabric..way too cute! Can’t wait to see what you do for her party!
Those are so sweet! You certainly have a happy baby. I’m glad you decided to DIY your own. It wouldn’t be right otherwise! Although, I have to admit, it would be really, REALLY difficult to pass up help from Mrs. Limestone. Her stuff is A-MAZING.
I know right? She’s like the Oprah of invitation making. The queen!
xo,
s
if my husband and i ever have kids – i am totally using your weekly photo idea. very cute.
Clara’s invitations are too cute!
Your weekly photo project is simply the greatest thing. I wish I would have jacked your idea when my babe was born 7 months ago! Just kidding, more like “borrowed.” :) Those invites are adorable. Winkflash always has crazy deals, and really good deals on photo books. Deals like unlimited pages, 50% of books, etc. Your photo project would be awesome is a book like that and grandmas will drool over them. Heck, I’d even order one! I’m such a fan!
I am in LOVE with the weekly Clara pictures. So original and beautiful! She’s going to love looking at those when she is older! You could even get a large frame and frame all the 52 photos as a collage or small thumbprints for her room! Such a wonderful memory.
LOVE the personalized fabric. Can’t wait to see what you end up doing with all of the fabric from her weekly pictures.
Can’t believe you didn’t get married at SEVEN pm. LOL
Haha, I know right? It had to do with the sunlight. We wanted wedding pics before the sunset started so they were bright and cheerful without too many shadows. The great thing is that at around 7 we were toasting, which was perfect.
xo,
s
Wow! Your Baby Center post came at just the right time for us! My hubby and I will celebrate our 2nd anniversary soon and the traditional gift is cotton. Now I’m thinking of making our monogram into a sweet patterned fabric… Just need to figure out what to make with it…
That’s such a cute idea!
xo,
s
A.W.E.S.O.M.E!
This is a little off topic, but it’s still party-planning related… I’m currently planning a baby-shower for a friend and I really want to make it very special. We’re all still very young (mid-twenties) and she’s the first to be preggo. Did you get a baby-shower thrown for you? What tips/advice can you, or any YHL readers, give me?
John’s cute family and my side of the fam each threw me a casual little shindig and I loved them both! One of the big hits is always baby shower bingo (everyone writes down which gifts you think the mom-to-be will open on a blank bingo board, ex: onesies, socks, books, blanket, stuffed animal, etc) and whoever gets bingo first wins (you can google around for bingo boards to print out for free and then just give the winner a cute gift like a box of chocolates or a candle or a potted plant). We also did a fun game where everyone guessed my girth. Haha. Literally each person at the party wrote down how many inches they thought my belly was and then we measured with a tape measure (hilarious) and there was a winner for that too (and some hilariously large and small guesses that didn’t come close). I think the key is just to keep it casual and draw people in with fun games but not too many so it feels overly scheduled. We just did two or three games and ate and I opened stuff and we all cooed at the cuteness of tiny baby clothes. Hope it helps! Anyone else have fun ideas for Andrea?
xo,
s
I just threw a baby shower for my sister-in-law. She had a hefty guest list of 75+ and since it was just me throwing the whole thing, I spent my effort on decorations, food and creating intimate spaces for people to mingle. Nice shag carpets defining different areas and comfy chairs. Balloons in her colors and a couple of handmade pendant banners. It was basically just a mingle, eat, and have her open your present one on one. It worked great for a large group. However, for my baby shower (my little girl is 14 months now!) we decorated onesies with fabric markers and I still have them all. Each person signed their name on the bum of the onesie. So cute!
Chris Loves Julia
We threw a shower for my sister last month, her third child, so it was very casual. The highlights were the bird’s nest cupcakes my other sister made and the “diaper game” which was a huge hit. You can see all the details here:
http://www.mysocalledhome.com/2011/03/baby-shower.html
Wow! This is so ironic! We moved into a new house about 10 weeks ago and we are planning a housewarming party for a ton of people so I am making my own postcard invites. I’m so glad that I read your post today! I want our invites to be nice and not cheesy looking.
Thanks for all your great ideas!
Clara’s invitations are beyond adorable! And Clara with a huge smile is priceless. Can’t wait to see how the party turned out.
Jessie
Our first is due this summer and I am totally stealing this idea! I love the look of all the different fabrics and baby poses!
I LOVE IT ALL!! You guys are so creative and inspiring. My baby girl is only 5 months, but I totally pinned the fabric under her 1st birthday ideas (never hurts to start planning early)! :-)
So cute. On a somewhat related note…
Did you mount your wedding invites on yellow cardstock, or is that a yellow border on white cardstock?
That was just a printed yellow border on white cardstock.
xo,
s
That fabric is AMAZING.
This is way cute! I saw that you used WinkFlash to make your invites…I have found a site that I love when making invites, books and cards.. I dont know if you have heard of mixbook.com, but they have amazing templates that allow you to make your items with. My husband and I got married last November so I thought it would be a great Christmas gift to make photo books and give them to all of our family members… so, I ordered 9 of them. The best part was that I found a coupon code online for 60% off of all books!!! So the books were only about $216.00 total for 9 (55 page) books!
http://www.mixbook.com/photo-books/wedding/brad-aubry-5027339
Ooh thanks for the suggestion! We’ll have to check them out!
xo,
s
LOVE the fabric! Love the invitation. Love all your inspiration!