My most recent party was another baby shower but with a very different theme... Alaska! It was for my friend Ashleen. Her and her husband named their baby boy "North". They are very much into hunting and all things outdoorsy.
First the Invitation:
Envelope Front and Back
Invite Front and Back
Close up of the cool font I used for his name, the Welcome sign, and the Guest Book. I think it's called Pinewood.
Okay- So I'll walk you through the house so you can see all the cool aspects of this party.
Here's the awesome wreath I put on their front door. My mom actually made this several years ago, but it fit the theme perfectly so I borrowed it. :-)
The Entryway when you walk in the door had a table set up with a camo table runner and a Welcome sign. We have this cool Elk candle holder so I used that and put shotgun shells in it.
I made a Guest Book for people to sign as they walked in.
Here's the Party Favors for people to take as they leave. Trail Mix in a bag with a Thank You bear on the front and a ribbon handle.
Then the banner was hung on the wall going up the stairs. In retrospect I probably wouldn't put it there again... It hardly got looked at because it was so long and in such an up-close space and people skipped right by it on their way up the stairs to the party.
I made the banners with my Cricut and used the Going Places Cartridge and a few images from the Camp Out Cartridge and I used the Moose from the Animal Kingdom Cartridge.
I made some decorative candles covered with paper to look like shotgun shells. I ran a bit of gold cording along the bottom to look like the lip on the shotgun shell and stamped stuff on the sides where they would have the brand and size of shell on them.
Here they are displayed on the mantle with the baby's name banner. The parents absolutely LOVED these! They even bought them from me after it was over because I hadn't planned on including them in the stuff I was gonna just give them. I bought these LED pillar candles from Sam's Club to use in my party business and planned on recovering them to use for several different parties, but they gave me cash so I just went and bought some new ones.
I made some box lanterns with the Cricut and placed 6 of them along the hearth. There are LED tea lights in them shining through the vellum.
Those bags are the game prizes, Beef Jerky and Candy Bars. :-) The other Lanterns were hung on a garland with shotgun shells in between. My husband actually helped me make it!
I love that you can see them glowing!!
So what do you think about the Moose Stork? I cut it out of Vinyl on the Cricut and had to piece it together to get it that big but it turned out great. They absolutely LOVED it!! It was so perfect for them, of course their baby was delivered by a moose instead of a stork! :-)
Whew! This post is shaping up to be a LONG one!!! I'm not even done yet.... Lol!
I brought my Yukon Scentsy Warmer and we had that going during the party.
Along with the vinyl moose I also made a bunch of black bears out of vinyl and we stuck a large mama bear and cub on their sliding glass door and small bears on their dining room light fixture.
Now here's where I kick it up a notch... :-)
Although I wasn't in charge of doing the food I did volunteer to bring cookies and cakes. But that just didn't feel like enough for me. I am such a control freak sometimes that it was hard for me not to be in charge of every aspect of the party, especially food since I like to coordinate everything to the theme of the party. So to compensate for my lack of control I figured I could at least spring for the plates and cups.
I bought a really nice clear set of plates from Sams's Club. But Clear? Seriously? That just won't do.
So I cut out Vinyl and decorated the plates and cups!! We only got pictures of the bear plate, but I had at least 6 different designs on the plates. Bear, Moose, Compass, Pine Trees, Wolf, and something else but I can't remember it. All the cups were just bears.
I made Alaska cookies with the Big Dipper and North Star on them, Baby's name is North and they decorated his Nursery wall with some Vinyl stars in the shape of the Big Dipper and North Star, so I thought it would coordinate well.
This was the first time I got to use the new cake stand I got for my birthday and so I planned a design that would incorporate all three tiers. Again, with the Big Dipper on the bottom tier, the North Star on the middle right tier and Alaska on the upper left tier. I enlisted some help from my friend Melissa with the cake so I didn't actually do them, but I think she did a great job!
Although it's hard to see, I decorated the edges of my serving platters with Camouflage paper. I guess the camo did it's job, because it blends right in with the table! LOL! :-) I did this with the platters at Melissa's baby shower too but we didn't get any pictures of those ones. I like doing this because it just adds a little something extra, and I love that everything matches!
Lastly, a couple pictures of me and Ashleen. She looks like she liked her party, don't you think?
Um, try to ignore the huge cheesy grin I have, I don't know what I was doing! OH! Did you notice my shirt?? I bought it so I would match the party too!! That's gonna be one of my signature things, wearing something to match my parties!!
Monday, October 25, 2010
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Party Planner and Event Designer- Handouts
So now that I've decided to give this party planning idea a go, I made up these hand-outs in Photoshop of my previous parties to give to the ladies I threw the parties for so that they can hand them out whenever anyone comments on their baby showers and asks about it.
(You can click on the pictures to see them larger and more details)
Carolyn's Baby Shower
So, the more I play around with Photoshop CS4 the more I LOVE IT!! I scanned in the invitation from Carolyn's shower and extracted elements from it. Like that black scalloped border, it is made by a paper punch I have that I bordered the envelope with and the pink paper is the actual paper I used to make the envelopes out of. And the pregnant lady, that's a $1 stamp from Michaels. The blacked out umbrella is from a Cricut cartridge that I used on the banner then extracted out of a photo to use in my title. If you think about it that way you're not limited to just using digital images and fonts available on the internet. I literally have thousands of options between all the scrapbooking tools that I have and all the Cricut cartridges I own!!

These two are basically the same but I wasn't happy with the way the left one turned out so I revised it into the one on the right and I included some more information about my services.
The font I used on these and the baby shower decorations is called Christie.
Melissa's Baby Shower



Same thing with these ones, I did the left first, didn't like it, changed it to the right one. I'm just including both of them on here to show the different aspects of the parties.
Now here's my Photoshop details: The title is actually the font on the Life is a Beach Cricut cartridge. I didn't even have to cut them out and photograph them, I just arranged them on my Cricut Design Studio program and pushed the Print Screen button to copy-paste them into Photoshop. Easy Peasy!
The It's A Boy charms are all from photos of the actual banner!! It was a little work to extract them cleanly from the photos but it was worth it, so cute! Thanks for looking (and making it to the end of this boring technical post). If you see something you like feel free to say so... I love comments!!
(You can click on the pictures to see them larger and more details)
Carolyn's Baby Shower
So, the more I play around with Photoshop CS4 the more I LOVE IT!! I scanned in the invitation from Carolyn's shower and extracted elements from it. Like that black scalloped border, it is made by a paper punch I have that I bordered the envelope with and the pink paper is the actual paper I used to make the envelopes out of. And the pregnant lady, that's a $1 stamp from Michaels. The blacked out umbrella is from a Cricut cartridge that I used on the banner then extracted out of a photo to use in my title. If you think about it that way you're not limited to just using digital images and fonts available on the internet. I literally have thousands of options between all the scrapbooking tools that I have and all the Cricut cartridges I own!!

These two are basically the same but I wasn't happy with the way the left one turned out so I revised it into the one on the right and I included some more information about my services.
The font I used on these and the baby shower decorations is called Christie.
Melissa's Baby Shower



Same thing with these ones, I did the left first, didn't like it, changed it to the right one. I'm just including both of them on here to show the different aspects of the parties.
Now here's my Photoshop details: The title is actually the font on the Life is a Beach Cricut cartridge. I didn't even have to cut them out and photograph them, I just arranged them on my Cricut Design Studio program and pushed the Print Screen button to copy-paste them into Photoshop. Easy Peasy!
The It's A Boy charms are all from photos of the actual banner!! It was a little work to extract them cleanly from the photos but it was worth it, so cute! Thanks for looking (and making it to the end of this boring technical post). If you see something you like feel free to say so... I love comments!!
Saturday, October 16, 2010
Baby Shower - Black and White, and PINK!
I have wanted to get my hands on these pictures for a VERY LONG time... This is the baby shower I helped throw for my friend Carolyn back in May. I made the diaper cake and carriages and huge tissue paper pom-poms to hang all over the apartment.

You can't quite see the counter with the food on it, but I ran some ribbon and tulle along the edge of it, and made some cute little food picks for the chicken sandwiches.
On the other side of the room was the banner, some more pom-poms, a handmade cardboard vase (for silk flowers), and the tray of party favors (which we never got any pictures of). More about that later...
I made the banner with my Cricut and strung it up with some tulle. The pink paper I used is actually kinda shimmery.
Also across the room on the counter with the food was this silverware holder I made. A little overkill I will admit, but it was cute. The images on it are stamped, cut out, and adhered with foam tape to make them pop out. I don't have other pictures but on the back is an image of a pregnant lady, some baby feet, and a stork.
The baby shower was held in a secure apartment building... which meant we had to physically let each person in! Did I mention we were on the third floor?!! So I hung this sign so people would know to ring the buzzer and I would run down to let them in. And run down I did!!! Like 20 times!! Good workout I guess...
I fancied up this little notebook for the Guest Book so they would have something to do while they waited on me to let them in.
So what do you think? Not bad for my first party right? I had so many compliments and suggestions to start up my own party planning business that I started to really contemplate all the aspects of it...
I think I just might give it a shot!! :-)
Here's the invitation:
Here's the invitation:
Okay- if you're still here after all these pictures and my extremely boring captions, here's the story about the party favors... I made a mixture of mixed nuts and dinner mints to put in these little clear bags. Then I made a matching topper to staple them shut and tied ribbon onto to carry. Not funny? Just wait. So, for some reason instead of calling them party favors someone (my husband) started referring to them as "Nut Sacks". Yup, it stuck. All night we were coming up with new "Nut Sack" jokes for them. On a few occasions we actually told some guests "Don't forget to grab your "nut sack" before you leave"!!
Okay I guess it might have been funnier in person...
Oh well, we got a lot of laughs!
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Really Easy Cupcake Box Tutorial
So do you remember these cupcake boxes from the last day of school?
They are SOOOOO easy and I have had a few people ask how I made them... So here is my short, and very informal tutorial. Please don't judge my diagrams, I made them quickly in Paint instead of super perfect and accurate in Photoshop like I really wanted to do.
The box is super simple (especially with a scoring tool or scoring blade on your trimmer) it's just a square that you score into 9 equal sections. (Yes I know mine aren't equal... I told you it wasn't going to be perfect)
Then cut off the corners, and score from the inside square's corners to the middle of the cutoff section. Fold on all score lines. The corner flaps inside the box will stick straight into the center, but once there is a cupcake in there you can just tuck them to the side so they don't stick into it.
If you want to fold over the top sides of the box (for double sided paper, and if the box is a little too tall), cut the corners down a little farther and score about 1/2 inch lower on each side. Then fold them over and glue.
Like I did on these ones...
The insert (to hold the cupcake centered) and the Lid are basically the same.
You need to glue the flaps on the Lid, but not on the insert (I actually just cut the corners of the insert all the way off).
To make the cutout in the center of the lid I used Design Studio and placed a square (the same size as my lid's center) on my DS mat and centered an image into it. Load your cricut mat with your lid placing the center part in the same place on your mat as the DS mat (I usually do it towards the middle at about 4 inches in and 4 inches over). Then delete the square from the DS mat and press cut on your computer.
I just cut some plastic from a page protector that I glued on the inside of the lid to make the window in the box.
I hope this isn't confusing or missing any important steps...
Good Luck!
And if you make one using this tutorial, I would love to see it!! Leave me a comment so I can check out yours!
They are SOOOOO easy and I have had a few people ask how I made them... So here is my short, and very informal tutorial. Please don't judge my diagrams, I made them quickly in Paint instead of super perfect and accurate in Photoshop like I really wanted to do.
The box is super simple (especially with a scoring tool or scoring blade on your trimmer) it's just a square that you score into 9 equal sections. (Yes I know mine aren't equal... I told you it wasn't going to be perfect)
Then cut off the corners, and score from the inside square's corners to the middle of the cutoff section. Fold on all score lines. The corner flaps inside the box will stick straight into the center, but once there is a cupcake in there you can just tuck them to the side so they don't stick into it.
If you want to fold over the top sides of the box (for double sided paper, and if the box is a little too tall), cut the corners down a little farther and score about 1/2 inch lower on each side. Then fold them over and glue.
Like I did on these ones...
The insert (to hold the cupcake centered) and the Lid are basically the same.
You need to glue the flaps on the Lid, but not on the insert (I actually just cut the corners of the insert all the way off).
To make the cutout in the center of the lid I used Design Studio and placed a square (the same size as my lid's center) on my DS mat and centered an image into it. Load your cricut mat with your lid placing the center part in the same place on your mat as the DS mat (I usually do it towards the middle at about 4 inches in and 4 inches over). Then delete the square from the DS mat and press cut on your computer.
I just cut some plastic from a page protector that I glued on the inside of the lid to make the window in the box.
I hope this isn't confusing or missing any important steps...
Good Luck!
And if you make one using this tutorial, I would love to see it!! Leave me a comment so I can check out yours!
Sunday, October 10, 2010
Life is a Beach - Surf's Up Baby Shower
Okay- I can't believe it's taken me this long to finally get these photos edited to put on here!!! I was really upset that I didn't get any pictures before or during the party, the only ones we snapped were after it was over and we had already cleaned up all the food and the lovely table display! :-( Well, here's Melissa's Baby Shower...
You probably already saw the Surfboard Sugar Cookies in a previous post because I was just so proud of them I couldn't get enough pictures!! Sorry about the repeats.
I made a life-size surfboard prop out of foam-core board. Well, not exactly life size, but it was big... :-)
Here's some of the decorations... I thought it would look super "beachy" if we draped towels along the banister like you would see at the dock... Unfortunately someone said that their first impression was that we forgot to put the laundry away LOL!
I made the Surf's Up sign on my Cricut and made it huge using Design Studio, but I had to
piece it together in like 5 separate parts.
I loved the banner that I made!! It was made with the Life Is A Beach cartridge. I embellished it with ribbon on the bikini and flip flops, jewels, and lots of glitter.
Instead of games I planned a baby shower craft, painting onesies with freezer paper stencils I cut out beforehand. I love how cute they look hanging on the clothesline!!
I just had to throw this one in here!! :-)
EmmaLee pretending to Surf!!
EmmaLee pretending to Surf!!
Last of all, I am so excited to show you how Melissa used all the baby shower decorations in Calvin's Nursery!! So Cute!!!
Did you notice the pineapples?? :-)
Here's the links to the previous posts about Melissa's baby shower.
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