The Baby Shower Invitation - Part I

This post has a Part I and Part II because of the many photos. Please scroll down after this post to view Part II for the remaining photos. I hope that you enjoy!

Hello!

I posted a photo last Wednesday on WOYW of a very labor intensive baby shower invitation project that I had been working on for days. I had been asked to make 30 invitations for a baby shower for my oldest granddaughter Tiffany, who is having her third child - my third great grandchild - next month. There are two sweet little boys waiting to meet a new sister. I don't get to see them as they live in NH and I am in WI so I wanted to make something special for her - and although there was a near disaster which almost gave me a heart attack and made me just want to cry - I was pleased with the end result.

The two colors Tiffany had chosen were a soft pink and a chocolate brown. I wanted to make something girly so I went on a blogger search and sent photos of ideas to NH and I was very happy when they chose my favorite - the little onesie. Then it was off to check out the stores and I found a soft pink polka dot pattern paper with a solid pink backside and a chocolate brown cardstock. Then I set to work.

Because I planned a lot of detail to the design of the onesie, which meant lots of cutting by hand, paper punching and gluing tiny pieces, etc. I knew that this would be difficult with my poor eyesight so I added another Ott Lite on the left side of my workdesk. This helped so much during the many hours of working that I have kept it there. I now have three lights for my workdesk - but it sure makes a difference in what I can see clearly! :<)

The first step was to print a pattern of the onesie that I had found on the Internet onto white cardstock and cut it out. Then on my paper cutter I cut the 15 sheets of 12 x 12 polka dot paper into half so I had 30 sheets of 6 x 12, folded each of those in half and started to trace the onsie pattern on one side - 30 times. :<)

Then I cut each one out - leaving the fold at the top -
30 times. :<)

To make a scalloped collar for the onesie I used a large scallop circle punch and positioned a strip of the brown cardstock so that 11 of the scallops showed on the punched piece.

Then I made the neckline using a circle punch.

For the little piece that would be at the crotch of the onsie where it is attached with snaps, I used a scallop oval punch with the strip of the polka dot paper inserted half way.

For the trim on the arms I used the scallop border punch and then cut it in strips that were a bit longer than double the length of the front of the arm and folded them in half - so that there was trim on each side of the card.

I then sponged all around the edges of all of the pieces - the entire onsie and the crotch piece - with chocolate brown ink, including all of the edges on the inside of the onsie. (That was 60 times.) The strips of the polka dot paper are just trimmed pieces that remained after cutting out the onsie.

I then glued the collars on each of the card fronts and then began to glue the piece at the crotch on the bottom edge of the onsie. You can see my invitation with the completed front of the card standing in the back. On the workdesk are all of the folded strips for the arms, and the punched circles for the snaps of the crotch piece and the hearts for the buttons under the collar.

Please scroll down for Part II.