I positively love working with my talented friend Steph on parties for her kiddos. Remember the ridiculously adorable Olivia The Pig party from last year? Yeah… she’s pretty good at throwing parties!This year she conceptualized an “Ombre Beach Party” as a joint party for her daughter and son. I loved the idea and love being a part of her creative process so I was onboard for the printables. Pink faded into blue to honor both genders. She always comes up with a way to make her parties perfect for both and girls. That’s not easy to do, but she sure makes it look like it is.Since they were inviting friends from all over SoCal, she wanted to include a map to the beach they were celebrating on. Here’s what was on the back of the invite.I’m excited to share the actual party photos once she gets them back. Unfortunately I had to miss the party first-hand so I am just as excited to see what she did as you are! Here’s a sneak peak of their beach bash!
Here’s an invitation I put together for a rehearsal dinner. She’s got Italian roots. He’s grew up in England. They were planning on taking a double decker bus to an Italian restaurant for the rehearsal dinner. It was a fun one to work on.The back of the invite was covered in Italian flags and Union Jacks. Fun.
One of the more unique requests I’ve gotten lately was making an invite for a “Thinka Zinka” birthday party held at a local beach. Remember Zinka? That awesome neon sunscreen you’d put on your nose and cheeks in the 80s? How funky! I guess this cute 9 year old is really into 80s surf culture and loves neon and bright colors so that’s what he got! His mom is a blast to work with and I’m sure with all of her creativity, the party turned out fabulous!
This past spring I had the pleasure of working on a Rock Star themed baby shower invitation for my friend Amy. In searching for inspiration, I came across the genius in Jessica of Modern Moments Designs’ rock star party she threw for her son. It’s probably the best party I’ve ever seen! Go check it out!Anyway, I looooooved everything about it and thought the stripes & fonts she chose were fabulous for the theme. I reinterpreted (ok! stole!) her ideas into a baby shower invitation complete with a rockin’ onesie that says “AB CD.”Stripes, houndstooth, black and blue… looks like a rockin’ party to me!
Invites and full party pack available right here in my Etsy shop.
Huh? Yep, that’s what I thought too. First of all, welcome to June! Can you believe how fast this year is flying? And welcome to party season! This month alone we are committed to throwing or going to at least 10 parties so far. Bananas! And speaking of bananas… this is the party that my almost 3-year-old son requested this year. A “Monkey, Donkey, Robot, Piñata Birthday Party.” Don’t believe me? Check out this video we took of him in March – (the robot was a late entry, which he later tried to change to a monster but I vetoed that since the invites were already done!)He would NOT budge from this theme and the more I thought about it, the cooler I thought it would be. Okay… so monkeys, donkeys, piñatas & robots. Let’s roll with it!As a rule, I am a maximalist. I love simplicity, but I don’t do it very well, so this is what we ended up with. Since the theme is so… hmmm… diverse? wonky? bonkers?… I kept the icons (which I yanked from google’s image search, then converted to illustrations in Illustrator) black and white and pulled the color in through other places. That red and that blue is my favorite color combo in the world (I call it “Thing One & Thing Two Red & Blue”) so I decided to use them for this party. I, like everyone else in the world, am on a bit of a chevron kick so I wanted to incorporate that into the party as well. I found the envelopes on zazzle and they have a bunch of other cool color combos as well. Check it out.To add to the wonky vibe, you’re asked “What’s up buttercup?” on the back of the envelope. Why not? I had to wrap the return address around anyway, and leaving it red just seemed wasteful to me! Hee hee!I used thick foam tape to mount the white part of the invite to the blue chevron. (See how it’s raised in the photo above?) The red “3” pattern was on the back and also used as an envelope liner. The party isn’t for 3 weeks but I thought sharing this was a good way to kick off his birthday month. Wording was: You’re invited to Brooks’
MONKEY DONKEY ROBOT PINATA BIRTHDAY PARTY
Yep. For reals. Join us at a funky little shindig for a funky little guy. (Date/Time) Brooks’ Pad (Address) RSVP to Annika No Gifts Necessary Can’t wait to share photos of the “funky shindig” with you later this month! (And for those of you coming, ignore the date on these… this was round 1! You know the real date of the party!)
Growing up I absolutely loved flip books where you could give a dog’s head an ostrich tummy and an alligator tail. Heidi of My Paper Crane created these insanely creative and totally awesome flip book invites for her son’s upcoming 8th costume themed birthday party. How I wish I thought of this! I would have played with this invite forever as a young girl. Well… actually, I would probably still play with it forever. Just amazing.
(Found via Sara’s Party Perfect & Hip Hip Hooray.)
A family friend of mine is getting married and his darling bride-to-be was in a bit of a pickle. The invitations she found in a store on Etsy suddenly disappeared. Wouldn’t that be heartbreaking? She had a sample invitation but when she went to order, the store had closed for business! Oh no! The original design is pictured directly above. She needed help recreating the same vibe with those cute little love birds and I was happy to help out. This is my version of the invite:A few less branches, a little cleaner, and the addition of stripes, patterns (on the back of the invite pictured below the RSVP) and pennants and we had a happy bride-to-be on our hands! The RSVP was a post card and the other side looks like this:I printed on Paper Presentation’s fabulous dutch felt and I think they turned out quite nicely. The guest’s addresses was printed directly onto the envelope with the birdies there to help deliver the good news. I got also to work on many more fun details for this wedding as well and hope to share that with you sometime this summer after the wedding. This is quite a creative and fun family I get to wrok with so I am so excited to see how everything turns out in the end.
Printable files can be found right here in my Etsy Shop.
Last fall I had a ‘flient’ (again: friend+client=flient) who needed invitations for a Caribbean bridal shower she was hosting. What a fun idea! I was on board as soon as I heard the theme.So many of my designs are inspired (or, let’s be honest, downright copied) from other brilliant minds. I usually scour the internet or books to get the creative juices flowing before starting a project. I found the awesome image above online and thought it was the perfect inspiration for the shower’s theme. The colors were perfect, the fonts looked great, and I particularly loved how the toucan was sitting in the “O.” The bride-to-be didn’t have an “O” in her name so I had my toucan sit on top of the “D.” The same feel, just a a different execution. And isn’t he a friendly little toucan?The toucan was too cute not to use twice so I had him sit on the outside of the envelope as well, right next to the address.I lined the envelopes and printed on the back as well, just forgot to take pics. Oh well! I learn as I go!
Happy Tuesday peeps!
I apologize in advance if this post puts The Love Boat theme in your head for the rest of the day… however this theme was too cute to pass up! This is an invite I did for a flient (friend+client=flient) who is hosting a Love Boat themed bridal shower next month. I always love getting ‘orders’ from this particular flient because she always has such fun parties! When she said “think Love Boat! Think cruise!” my head went straight to vintage cruise-liner posters. In addition to adding a heart and putting this bride-to-be’s new last name on the boat……the wording was super nauti-cool as well. Join us for a voyage on The Love Boat as we celebrate ___________’s cruise into marriage.
Setting sail on _________ at _______
The (host’s) dock (then address)
Hosted by cruise directors _____________
RSVP & RegistryAdd a “Ship to:” (hee hee) on the envelope and you’re all set! I design on a Mac using the Adobe CS4 programs and print all the invites I make on a HP Deskjet 9800. This particular invite was size A9. My favorite paper in the world is from a place in New York called Paper Presentation. I buy their Dutch Felt in bulk and use it for just about everything! I think it makes homemade invites look just a little bit more professional. There’s a great tooth to the paper and if I could, I might just marry it I love it so much. (It doesn’t really print so well with laser printers though.)I printed the back of the invite in big red & white stripes and lined the envelope, which was from Paper Source,with wrapping paper. I’m not sure where this red & white wrapping paper was from but if you’re looking for cute liners, check out Container Store’s selection. They always have great (and tons) of wrapping paper!
The gals hosting this shower always do such an insane job of throwing parties. Maybe I’ll convince them to share their pictures with me so I can share them with you next month! Stay tuned! I don’t think this Love Boat’s voyage is over quite yet!
I positively love working with my talented friend Steph on parties for her kiddos. Remember the ridiculously adorable Olivia The Pig party from last year? Yeah… she’s pretty good at throwing parties!
This year she conceptualized an “Ombre Beach Party” as a joint party for her daughter and son. I loved the idea and love being a part of her creative process so I was onboard for the printables. Pink faded into blue to honor both genders. She always comes up with a way to make her parties perfect for both and girls. That’s not easy to do, but she sure makes it look like it is.
Since they were inviting friends from all over SoCal, she wanted to include a map to the beach they were celebrating on. 
Here’s what was on the back of the invite.
I’m excited to share the actual party photos once she gets them back. Unfortunately I had to miss the party first-hand so I am just as excited to see what she did as you are! Here’s a sneak peak of their beach bash!
cakes likes a party 