My Big Fat Wedding Blog Hop

Welcome to My Big Fat Wedding Blog Hop. We are a group of a talented ladies who love paper crafting (well most of us) and will be show casing Our Amazing Creations along they way.  If you are visiting from Tammy  http://anonymouscricuter.blogspot.ca then you are

in the right place, If not, please go and start from the beginning at Vanessa

http://wwwpaperkraftsunlimiteddesings.blogspot.com

Blog Hop Giveaway is............ $10.00 Gift Card fom Ginger Snaps Scraps

Here is what I came up with:

Nautical Wedding Invitation

     Now that I have been to the wedding shower and know everyone has received their invitations I can finally share the process!Becca wanted a nautical theme, not a beach theme so we looked for ships, anchors, and ship's wheels. Thankfully Provo Craft has Life's A Beach and I was able to find all that I needed along with Imagine More.
     I presented her with the idea of a pocket type card to hold the reply card, reception and direction cards as well as the main invitation. I found the perfect kit by Wilton called the "String Of Pearls".

     This was a perfect selection for the outside since it had a wonderful crisp white with a nice satin sheen to it.

     This layout was just perfect for what we were looking for. It was very neat and organized and had a nice bead border almost like roping. The nice thing about this is that the template allowed me to change the font color and style so I could really customize these. Her colors are like a navy and a nice fresh green color so they were a very refreshing color to work with.

     Ready for the finished product? Here ya go:

     I started by adding a band of navy satin ribbon. ( My oldest daughter suggested it. Hey ya gotta give credit where it is due, right!).   I had found this roping at A.C. Moore in the yarn section. It has a nice satin sheen to it as well so it was just right for a classy wedding invitation. The image is from Imagine more and I changed the outer ring color to a more navy color but kept the inner ring and ship the same. This was cut @ 2" but I separated the layers but kept them at relative size so that everything was proportionate. I used a glue dot to secure the rope and image but made sure to bring the rope thru the ring.

     Here's the inside. Tada!!! First I used the Imagine More cart again. I chose the cut and print option and cut a 5"x7" with the same patterned paper as the inner ring of the life preserver. How cool is that? The outer layer is a blue card stock that also has a sheen. I bought that at Michael's from their recollections collection.In order to keep with the nautical theme I cut an anchor from Life's A Beach @ 1.25. Since I had to make 100 invitations I wanted to save some money on this project. There wasn't any silver card stock with the right color I wanted so I went to the canvas section @ M's and found this poster board for $4.00. I just cut it to 12x12 so I had 4+ sheets to work with. (Maybe there will be a lot of silver in my Christmas cards this year!)
     Once everything was printed it tucked neatly into the pocket. The only thing I would do different would be to add a silver compass on the directions card. BTW speaking of directions card. The front has directions to the church and the back has directions to the reception. Rather than buy more cards to use for the back, I cut some card stock the same size,printed the directions and used my ATG gun to glue them together.

   This is how the guests received their invitations. ( even though they were hand stamped, thank USPS for the wrinkled appearance, grrr). Bet you were wondering where the ships wheel I was talking about went to. Here is where it ended up! It is also from Life's A Beach and is also cut at 1.25". The circle behind it is from a circle punch with the leftover scraps from the blue background paper.

Becca had purchased these cute silver ships as part of the favors so everything just sort of fell into place. I had used the same RGB codes so all the font colors were the same from the invitation to the place cards.
I will leave you with one final picture. Of course it is of the wedding cake. Although I had nothing to do with this, I wanted to show you how wonderfully everything continued to carry out the theme.

As you can see the border includes small anchors.

Next you should head over to Jennifer and show her some love! Thank you so much for stopping by.

By The Sea

     I'm back!!! So I told you I have been busy with projects. I'm still working on the spare bedroom ( you know, the nautical themed one). I decided to make a wall plaque using a variety of techniques I have learned from my classes @ My Creative Classroom.
     The shape is from Donna Salazar's Creative Book Pages template from Spellbinders. I used Zutters corrugated card board for the base and used Donna's technique using white opaque ink and some white embossing powder. This gives such a cool effect!
      The stamp in from Inkadinkado ( I incorrectly identified this stamp in a previous post). If you want to see the color combos I used with copic markers just check out the post for the Graduate card.
     The tag is a shipping label that I used smooch spritz on and then used Beacons liquid laminate  to attach the quotes from K & Company Sea stack.I made a little pocket out of craft cork that I backed with card stock to give it a little stability. I also found these fish brads hanging around in my brad drawer just waiting to be used, lol.
     I dug into my treasure trove of embellies and found this metal art that says "Best of Times" and a small one in the corner that says " remember". The top of the tag is finished with some cotton cording and a small silver seashell charm.
     I always love to incorporate something of meaning into my art work and this piece is no exception. Do you see the seashell I used for the hanger? This is from a door tag that was on our hotel room door when we visited Hawaii back in the '90's! How this inspires you a little.

I'll Always Have A Helping Hand.

          I always wanted to try printing on fabric, so when this was one of the lessons in the mixed media class, I knew this was the class for me. I am in the process of redoing our youngest son Steve's room with a nautical theme.
     There is 15 years 4 days difference between our oldest and youngest. Mike was going away to college and Steve was entering nursery school, lol. The photo was taken on Cape Cod while the 2  brothers were climbing on rocks. Steve (the younger one) was very nervous, so his big brother (Mike) reached out his hands and coaxed him up. The colors were just perfect for what I was looking for.
     I printed out the perfect sentiment: "I'll always be there with a helping hand." The solid light blue color is from a pair of my favorite capris. They were so worn I really had to replace them but couldn't bring myself to throw them away. They were so comfy. Glad I saved them because they were just the right color.
     Next I went through my buttons and found these that have a greyish tone with a black stripe in them. They go perfect with the rocks in the photo.
     I finished the edges with some French Knots with a darning cotton to add a little dimension to the piece. I really love how this turned out (as well as my sons, lol). Steve graduates college in another month AND has a job( as well as a cute girl friend!). Mike is married, lives in Florida, has a lovely wife and 2 wonderful children, Alexis and Nicholas. He also owns his own company. I'm sure this will become a conversation piece in this bedroom as well as making me smile every time I walk by.

Nautical Wedding Invitation

     Now that I have been to the wedding shower and know everyone has received their invitations I can finally share the process!Becca wanted a nautical theme, not a beach theme so we looked for ships, anchors, and ship's wheels. Thankful Provo Craft has Life's A Beach and I was able to find all that I needed along with Imagine More.
     I presented her with the idea of a pocket type card to hold the reply card, reception and direction cards as well as the main invitation. I found the perfect kit by Wilton called the "String Of Pearls".

     This was a perfect selection for the outside since it had a wonderful crisp white with a nice satin sheen to it.

     This layout was just perfect for what we were looking for. It was very neat and organized and had a nice bead border almost like roping. The nice thing about this is that the template allowed me to change the font color and style so I could really customize these. Her colors are like a navy and a nice fresh green color so they were a very refreshing color to work with.

     Ready for the finished product? Here ya go:

     I started by adding a band of navy satin ribbon. ( My oldest daughter suggested it. Hey ya gotta give credit where it is due, right!).  had found this roping at A.C. Moore in the yarn section. It has a nice satin sheen to it as well so it was just right for a classy wedding invitation. The image is from Imagine more and I changed the outer ring color to a more navy color but kept the inner ring and ship the same. This was cut @ 2" but I separated the layers but kept them at relative size so that everything was proportionate. I used a glue dot to secure the rope and image but made sure to bring the rope thru the ring.

     Here's the inside. Tada!!! First I used the Imagine More cart again. I chose the cut and print option and cut a 5"x7" with the same patterned paper as the inner ring of the life preserver. How cool is that? The outer layer is a blue card stock that also has a sheen. I bought that at Michael's from their recollections collection.In order to keep with the nautical theme I cut an anchor from Life's A Beach @ 1.25. Since I had to make 100 invitations I wanted to save some money on this project. There wasn't any silver card stock with the right color I wanted so I went to the canvas section @ M's and found this poster board for $4.00. I just cut it to 12x12 so I had 4+ sheets to work with. (Maybe there will be a lot of silver in my Christmas cards this year!)
     Once everything was printed it tucked neatly into the pocket. The only thing I would do different would be to add a silver compass on the directions card. BTW speaking of directions card. The front has directions to the church and the back has directions to the reception. Rather than buy more cards to use for the back, I cut some card stock the same size,printed the directions and used my ATG gun to glue them together.

   This is how the guests received their invitations. ( even though they were hand stamped, thank USPS for the wrinkled appearance, grrr). Bet you were wondering where the ships wheel I was talking about went to. Here is where it ended up! It is also from Life's A Beach and is also cut at 1.25". The circle behind it is from a circle punch with the leftover scraps from the blue background paper. I'll be posting later where I assembled them, you'll never guess!