My First Official Crafty Experience

Last summer, my parents were kind enough to throw Mr. Peacock and me an engagement party. We made several different types of of hors d'oeuvers, fun party drinks and had a cocktail party in my parent's backyard. My mom loves to garden and in the late summer the flowers are coming up everywhere. It was nice to be able to break up our crazy long engagement with a little celebration.

I had been playing around with the idea of making my invitations and I took advantage of the party as an excuse to play with my tools. I was inspired by a stamp ("Cottage Bloom") that I bought at last year's Paper Source Paper Wedding event. I used a watermark stamp pad and light gold powder to create the pretty, shiny flower. I had to test out several different combinations of stamp pad + embossing powder to get to just the right shade of warm gold. I paired it with some pretty blue ("Lake") cards and ivory cardstock. Here are the results:

Stamping

Powdering

Drying

Invite Done!

The ivory cards were 4.5x4.5 and the blue cards are 5x5. Cutting squares was pretty easy, compared to my previous forays into cutting rectangles. I loved using the embossing powders and I even had fun picking out the fonts. It was also nice to give my newly acquired embossing dryer a test run. This experience taught me two things- 1) I can totally make my wedding invitations and my mom and I might even enjoy it and 2) I really don't want to make my wedding invitations. I will commit to the save the dates, the direction cards, the menus and place cards. A girl can only do so much without a printing press.

I know a lot of you are making your invitations. Anyone want to convince me that I should go for it? :) Any other words of wisdom for those venturing into that arena?