Archives for: August 2006

Your child has been waiting months for this special occasion—their birthday party! And perhaps you've waited until the last minute to plan the event. Whether you organize a simple pizza and cake gathering at the local park or an event so creative and planned that it nears performance art, remember to relax and have fun yourself. This is every child's chance to be the center of attention and with cake and friends, any additional ingredients are sure to be a success. (Just remember to enlist enough teens or other family members to help.) Considering the energy level of your spirited guests, having an outdoor, garden-themed birthday party is natural and can be quickly planned. Activities from pin the bee on the flower to decorating garden hat sun visors to serving your punch from a watering can will amuse and delight your guests. Visit www.birthdaypartyideas.com</a> for parents' descriptions of excellent garden-themed party ideas.

Encourage creativity and build confidence in your child from an early age by helping them to hand make this easy garden-themed birthday invitation shown below. This simple design features a lady bug with black stickers applied for the spots on the beetle's wings. After the large red circle is cut out, your child can apply the spots in this mistake-proof design. (It doesn't even matter where the dots are placed as lady bugs are known for their unique spot patterns.) The design also features a gold decorative spiraled paper clip that has been slightly bent to form the antennae.

Here's what you need:

• Red paper
• Black paper
• Black seals
• Double stick dots
• Decorative heart clip
• Ecru folded card
• Earth colored envelope

The construction of this invitation is quite simple. A few notes: the shape of the wings is created by cutting one of the black seals into a triangular shape and placing it at the bottom of the body. The two ends of the heart-shaped decorative clip are pulled apart a bit to widen the distance between the two ends and then the spirals are bent so they face outward. The clip is secured to the card under the beetle's head with double stick dots. Invitation wording is printed or written inside the folded card.

See our colorful specialty papers for creating children's birthday party invitations and get creative with invitation accessories. Finish your imaginative invitation by choosing from colorful and textured envelopes that enhance the design.

Another garden bug project to accessorize your party is this dragonfly (shown below) made from a lime colored paper flecked with sparkled fibers, translucent vellum and silver seals. Make several dragonflies ahead of time and hang them from the ceiling—in case weather requires you to have an indoor garden party, or tie this dragonfly to the end of a stick and you will have children darting about your yard shrieking with excitement as their dragonfly flutters from behind.

Here's what you need:

• Lime sparkles paper
• Translucent vellum
• Silver seals
• Double stick dots
• Nylon string

Simply cut out the body and wings of the dragonfly. Your child can help assemble the dragonflies before your party or save the creation of your dragonflies for a party activity. The wings are attached to the body with double stick dots. The head of the dragonfly is created by sticking two silver seals together. The string is secured by placing one of the string ends in between the two seals.

Another great starting point for a theme focused invitation is to find decorative fonts. You can find numerous playful or childlike free fonts (and even installation instructions) at www.momscorner4kids.com</a>. This site is continually updated with fonts appropriate for child-themed invitations and scrapbook pages. Below is an example of the font, Ivy, a great font for your garden-themed birthday invitation. Here the Ivy font is combined with the font Albertus MT. Experiment with mixing fonts, colors and font size to create a playful look.

Flores is another great font for a garden party and available for free download from www.momscorner4kids.com</a>. The effect looks like fancy digital art but simply requires word processing software such as Microsoft Word. Again it's just a matter of choosing a large font size that allows the details of the font to be seen and having fun with color!—even your small child can type out the wording for his or her invitation and choose the colors.

So pull out your scissors, papers, seals, markers or fonts and start your birthday invitation project with your child. You will find your child has a natural confidence when it comes to creating artwork and will enjoy working with you—create family-time memories even before the party begins and plant the seeds of confidence and creativity early.

Tags: children's birthday party invitations, handmade invitations, parenting, diy invitations, projects for kids

Link: http://www.lcipaper.com/cards/photocards.shtml

These printable 5 x 7 foldover greeting cards are made of smooth 80# card stock with two adhesive strips on the front flap for securing a 4 x 6 photograph. Choose from our wide array of bright colors and print your custom holiday greeting on the included white folding insert sheet. As an accessory, we recommend our elastic string bow loops in silver or gold - these help to hold the insert sheet within the card while adding a subtle, shiny embellishment to the card. Pefect for sending a family photo to your friends and relatives during the holiday season! Sold in kits of 25, including folding card, white insert sheet and white envelope.

Tags: holiday greeting cards, printable greeting cards, photo cards

Link: http://www.lcipaper.com/specialty/pearlized.shtml

These delicately patterned lightweight papers are perfect for embellishing invitations, for use as stationery (they are laser printable!) or sophisticated giftwrapping papers. Sold in 21" x 31" sheets, these papers feature a metallic pattern printed over a solid background color: see our selection of Mango, Lime, and Ivory overlaid with a silvery floral design.

For creative ideas on how to use this decorative paper, consider cutting and lining plain envelopes to give them a unique metallic flair. Or make a stylish wrap for your invitation card by cutting and folding a piece of Pearlised Paper around your card, securing the two sides in the center of the card with a complementing silver faux wax seal or a piece of satin ribbon.

Tags: giftwrap, wrapping paper, japanese papers, metallic paper, patterned paper

So why are so many invitation artists, scrapbook makers and other paper artists fascinated with translucent vellum paper? Perhaps it's because translucent paper has a real personality about it. At the expense of sounding like a hopeless romantic, is it because vellum is rather like translucent sea glass gems found on a walk along the beach—a treasure no artistic soul could ignore? Or one might compare it to whimsical and airy cotton candy—so ethereal but so full of impact. It reminds us of romantic old parchment love letters but simultaneously has a modern hip translucent trendiness similar to that possessed by the latest translucent phones and CD players. There is something inherently appealing about translucent objects, and translucent paper is no exception.

Vellum paper harkens back to earlier times, but obviously the production of this paper differs from those days. From ancient times up until the 19th century, vellum was made by skinning a calf, then painstakingly scraping the leather and finally smoothing the skin with a pumice stone. One of the wonders of modern paper manufacturing is that this visually delicate yet highly sturdy paper is now made by refining 100% cellulose fibers into a gelatin-like mixture. Air and water is rapidly removed, the fibers are pressed into a smooth sheet and baked in an oven with sizing or glue added—and presto—you've got a sheet of beautiful, smooth vellum—not to mention, a lot of happy vegetarians ready to create vellum invitations.

The creative possibilities with vellum is so great because it allows colors and patterns to visually interact just as layered glazes in an oil painting would. Let's focus in on vellum envelopes. What's particularly nice about vellum envelopes is that you can design your handmade invitation specifically so that your invitation design peeks through the envelope, allowing visual elements of your invitation to interact with those of your envelope. Your envelope is transformed into something more than a protective enclosure for your invitation and becomes a work of art in itself.

Here are some examples of handmade invitations that make the most of translucent qualities of vellum envelopes in the manner described above. In this first example a wedding invitation inviting guests to a botanical garden wedding is created by rubber stamping a romantic Victorian drawing of a fern onto the front of a folded card using a green ink pad. This is placed in a clear vellum envelope that is rubber stamped with impressions of dragonflies using a gold ink pad. The layering of this imagery through the use of vellum produces a soft atmospheric feeling. Victorian and botanical-themed rubber stamps can be found at www.stampin.com or www.stamplandchicago.com.

Again making the most of vellum's "peek through" quality is this handmade invitation design created using a radiant white folded card rubber stamped with a Victorian rose. The outside of the card could also be customized with the bride and groom's name and wedding wording is presented inside the card. Loose rose petals are enclosed in the envelope. The romantic Victorian rose image and fragrant dried rose petals showing through your blushed pink vellum envelope make a beautiful introduction to your rose-themed wedding before the envelope is even opened.

Another exciting way to create an envelope presentation with real impact is to wrap your invite in a Japanese paper or cover a folded card with the paper as done in this illustration. Text inside the card could be colored to pick up one of the rich colors in the Japanese paper or even hand calligraphed with gold ink to repeat the metallic ink used in the Japanese paper. A lovely accent touch would be to rubber stamp a metallic gold butterfly inside the card as a repeat of the butterfly motif. When your completed invitation is placed inside a clear vellum envelope, the brilliant color and pattern of the paper softly shows through. Again the imagery on your Japanese paper is enhanced by the atmospheric vellum envelope. Here a mailing label is made by printing addresses on a sheet of Japanese Tairei paper; then the label is cut and glued to the envelope.

Let your imagination take flight with all of the possibilities for accenting your translucent vellum envelope using rubber stamping, stickers and seals along with inserts such as dried flowers, confetti and patterned paper.

Tags: vellum envelopes, vellum, handmade invitations, garden wedding invitations, rose wedding invitations, japanese papers

The squishy, squeaky rubber ducky is a perennial favorite of generations of little tots, but don't underestimate the number of grown-up tots still enchanted by this adorable little pop culture friend. It's no wonder that it's a party theme favorite for toddler birthday parties, baby showers or even lakeside, seaside or cruise ship weddings.

What could outdo dinner forks tinging on glasses, coaxing the bride and groom to kiss at their wedding reception? The answer is, of course, little squeaking rubber duckies, beseeching the bride and groom to display their show of affection. Simply place one rubber duck next to each guest's dinner plate, and you're sure to have a lively rubber ducky themed wedding. If you are hesitating at all, view the bride and groom rubber ducks available for the top of your wedding cake—now that's convincingly cute. A rubber ducky-themed wedding can be cleverly introduced to your guests by sending them a handmade invitation that combines a dressy, brilliant gold-ore card stock, a charming accent ribbon in a polka-dot pattern, and a cool watery-blue coordinating envelope. Complete your invitation with a rubber ducky accent sticker on the back of your envelope.

The potential for rubber ducky themed parties is unlimited. Let's look at a hand made invitation for a rubber ducky bridal shower. Matte finish Carnival yellow card stock is a perfect brilliant yellow color to bring your rubber ducky invitation to life. Layer a sheet of radiant white paper printed with text and rubber ducky clipart from Fonts and Graphics. Punch a hole in the white sheet and apply a self-adhesive bow on top of the sheet directly over hole securing bow and top sheet to the yellow card stock. The bottom of the sheet is scalloped with a scalloping scissor, and blue glitter ink is hand applied. A soft, translucent vellum envelope is a gorgeous contrast to your very contemporary black bow choice. When your guests arrive at your shower be sure to have rubber duckies floating in the punch bowl!

Tags: handmade wedding invitations, baby shower invitations, cruise ship weddings, beach weddings, seaside wedding, rubber ducky, rubber duckie