BRIDAL SHOWER: INVITATIONS
Over the years, I've had the chance to celebrate special occasions with many of my close friends and family. Showers are a sweet opportunity to show love and appreciation to someone you care about. I love planning and thinking of new and creative ways to make a shower unique. My sister-in-law, Abagail, is getting married this spring and I knew I wanted to throw one for her.
The first thing I needed to do was select a venue for the shower (more on this later). After selecting the location, it was time to design and send out the invitations.
DESIGN
Here are some things that I like to consider and think about when selecting a design.
SELECTING A DESIGN
Once I found the location of the shower, I wanted to pull in characteristics from the venue and put it in the invitations. I decided on a local restaurant named Community Loaves - they have a space they rent out for special occasions. There is a garden area behind the restaurant that is just perfect for the theme and design I was thinking of for this shower. Once I had the location figured out, I knew I wanted to go with a invitation design that included Dusty Millers. So I went on a search for design elements.
FINDING ELEMENTS
One of my go-to websites for design elements is Creative Market. They are typically reasonable and have large variety of resources. They also have a section titled "Free Goods" where they feature design elements for free!
After looking around for a bit, I settled on the Watercolor Anemone which had a couple of elements that I really wanted to use for this piece. Once I found this and downloaded it, I jumped on putting to design together.
DESIGN
The key to being productive with design work is finding time when you can get in the right headspace and work without interruptions. For me, this time is in the evening. Whenever I do graphic design work I like to use a program called Pixelmator. There are a number of reasons why I love this program:
- It's easy to learn.
- It contains all of the basic features you need to put together a nice design.
- It's inexpensive ($29.99).
Once I pulled over the elements I purchased from Creative Market, I began putting together text for the invitations. As I've mentioned before, I love fresh, bright, and clean designs. To stay within these categories, I kept all of the main text black to make it stand out and "pop" on the clean white background. To break up the black letters, I pulled the blue/green color of the Dusty Millers with the color selection tool and applied it to the "&" sign. But it still needed something else - so I added a line at the bottom to help balance out the text on the left side of the invitation.
It took me a little bit to position the leaves in just the right way. This happens sometimes! If you find yourself getting stuck (like I did) walk away for a little bit and come back with fresh eyes.
Once I finished the design, it was time to print these suckers out!
ASSEMBLY
PAPER
Picking out paper was actually pretty easy. If you are just wanting a white background it's pretty easy to find a good inexpensive card stock. If you are going with a specific color for you invites, it may be best to go into Office Depot or a local paper store and look at some of their options in person.
ENVELOPES
I found the envelops at Office Depot. It look some driving around to several different stores before I found these. I went with these because I really like the rustic and natural look of the brown paired with the more clean and elegant design of the invitations.
ADDRESSING
I love addressing envelops. I love the opportunity it gives to be creative and find unique ways of displaying peoples names. If you get stuck and aren't feeling creative, just go on Pinterest and search "Hand Written Envelop Addressing." And, of course, you can always have the names printed on the envelops - this looks good too!
In the end, I was really happy with the way these turned out. It's always fun to have an idea in your head and see it come to fruition.
I would love to hear about some of the ways you like to be creative. Let me know about some of your projects in the comments below.
| Credits: Author - Jacintha Payne; Photography - Calvin and Jacintha Payne |
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