Burlap and Lace for Love

Shortly after our wedding last April, a bridesmaid and life long friend said yes to the man of her dreams. It was the happiest day of her life and an exciting one for all her friends and family...especially me. I was excited to share in her joy and pass on all the advice I had about wedding planning and becoming a MRS. Little did I know, I would be given the ultimate position for that exact job...Matron of Honor! Here we are at my wedding last April...SO happy:)

Of course, I said YES YES YES, and quickly got to work on all things wedding again. I was still mourning the loss of my wedding days and this was exactly what I needed to bounce me back into wedding mode. The perspective was a different but, who cares, I've got parties to plan! First on the list, a beautiful bridal shower for my best friend. I quickly volunteered myself for stationary extraordinaire because I have taken a liking creating invitations. I have no clue why, but it works.

The invite design itself I created online and had it printed out at a local copy story for about a 1/4 of the price.

Then I measured the length of a 3 inch thick piece of burlap around the entire invite and did the same with the slightly smaller (1 1/2 inches) piece of lace. I brought both pieces to the back side of the invite and dabbed a SMALL amount of hot glue from the glue gun (careful not to burn yourself like I did) and hold down for 10 seconds or until the pieces all stick to the back. From the front they should look like this...

The format was set for a 6x6 print and therefore a 6 1/4 x 6 1/4 envelope which i found on a place called envelopes.com (go figure!).  They were sold in bulk so I have plenty of left over beige envelopes for my next project and they were a ton less then buying envelopes at Office Max. Here's the whole stack ready to go out! Keep in mind, any size letter that isn't "standard size" (roughly 6x11) cost extra to send in the mail. This size was 0.67 cents.

 Finally, I got very creative with the fonting. I originally wanted to feed the envelops through the printer with fancy printing but I was under a time crunch and frankly I could not figure out what the heck I was doing. So, I went on Etsy and searched for people who do funky calligraphy. Like these...

Then I just copied the lettering for each of the invites and I think they turned out pretty well! This was the bride's......

 I slapped a pretty butterfly stamp on them (happen to be a 0.67 cent stamp exactly) and out they went! Now the bridal shower weekend  is upon us and I can't wait to see Ashley and all of our friends as we celebrate another amazing couple beginning their lives together.

Party Nicole