Giddy Up!

I can't believe its been 4 days since I posted anything...all I can say is that I was spending lots of time getting more items done to post and went to visit my sister at college this weekend. So to my faithful readers who loaded this page 100 times over the weekend thinking I MUST have posted something by now (yeah, you know who you are :) I apologize!

This banner was for my fellow Etsyan Bridgett from b|e creative stationery. She is having a western themed 1st birthday party for her daughter Kendall. If you've read my blog before and have seen Bridgett's work, you know that she has a very simple and classy style. She made these invitations and sent them to me for inspiration:So I picked pink and brown papers that were pretty tone on tone and found a simple font that matched her invite and I accented with a script font shaped like a rope to fit the theme. Bridgett also sent me the silhouette of the little cowgirl for me to use on the banner. Here is how it turned out:
Hopefully I'll be back with more tomorrow night!

Another trip to the circus!

I already wrote about the invitations for this party, but I told you I'd keep you hanging as to inspirations and the rest of the project until it was all done. Well, here it is!

This client (who we figured out grew up in another small town in MN not so far from me, though she now lives in another state) is throwing a party for her boys who are turning 4 and 1. She started out by sending me these pictures from the Pottery Barn Kids catalog:
She said she loved the colors, the circus feel, and the animals on the back wall. From that, these are those invitations I showed you last week:
Then I shopped for paper and started the rest of the partyware. All in all there is a banner, 12 hats, 2 crowns, 36 cupcake toppers, 15 party favors, and 20 invitations:
Now I better go get it packed up so that its ready to ship in the morning!

Lollipops or cupcakes...how about both??

This is going to be a quickie! Lots of work to do tonight and I want to go to bed "early"!

I just finished these invitations for a client who is doing a candy theme for her daughter's first birthday, but she said she couldn't help having cupcakes involved, too. So her plan is to put the lollipops into the cupcake as decorations...brilliant! Here are the lollipops she ordered and sent me the pic as an inspiration:

She loved all the bright colors, but how there was still the girly pink and purple included as well.

I had already started drawing a new cupcake for another client who had given me an example of the things she liked, but it seemed to fit this invitation, too. So I finished it up and added it along with some new lollipops. After going back and forth several times and tweaking things so they were just the way we wanted them, this is how the invitation turned out:


Now I get to make the partyware to match! I LOVE when we start from scratch and make every part of the party custom so it is exactly what the customer wants. Check back in a few weeks for the matching set!

Darcy's Last Night Out

So, I'm pretty sure my sister could keep me in business with as many parties as she has going on! I already showed you her son's birthday and a baby shower she threw, and today I'll show you another one of her parties. She is a paying customer so I say keep 'em coming!

This time it was a bachelorette party for her friend Darcy. Darcy is a totally fUn and cRaZy girl...so Rachel really wanted the colors to be fun. All of the guests were to wear black and Darcy was going to be in green. I just went through the two hundred and some (yes, that's what I said, 200+) pictures that my sister took of the night and it looks like it was pretty fun and wild time! Here are a few pics of Darcy with the things I made her:
































Thank you, girls, for making her point at the signs...I'm sure no one would have known that I made them when I made this post if you hadn't! Ha! Love you, Rach and Darcy!

"I like what I see, BUT..."

Do you ever see something on my blog or in my shop that you like, but wish you could change it just a bit? These customers did!

Remember these pink and brown banners and cupcake toppers I did a couple months ago? This customer saw those and liked them but she wanted to add in a limey green and a bright pink in addition to the light pink and brown to match her invitations and serving platters that she'd already purchased. She also liked the font from the "B is for Baby" banner in my shop, so after finding her some paper and tweaking things a bit, here is the new banner for little Mallory:


Remember this circus themed banner I did earlier in the summer? This client loved that paper, but wanted something that didn't have a specific theme, just the bright colors. So here is how Ben's banner turned out:
She also wanted cupcake toppers...and I must say these are my favorite that I've made so far!



























Then, when I was almost done with her order, she found this Wilton cake pan at Target. It makes a cake that ends up being shaped like a huge cupcake.

So she decided along with her little cupcakes she was going to use this for Ben's "smash cake" and so she wanted me to make a giant sized cupcake topper and wrapper for the cupcake. I went to Target to get the pan, fully intending on returning it after I got the right angle for the cut of the wrapper...but guess who is the new owner of a giant cupcake Wilton pan?? It was just too cute and I figured I will get plenty of use out of it with my 3 kids over the next 18 years or so! So here is the giant cupcake topper and wrapper:


So remember that if you see something you like, but just isn't quite right, ANYTHING can be changed to your liking, just ask!

Jungle Luv...

Thanks to all who emailed or convoed me with well wishes. I am recovering from my surgery...good news is that the surgery went well, the bad news is that they found several more problems, so looks like knee surgery #5 is on the way in the future. And not just the easy kind I had yesterday. Eeeewwww. I also have the doctor's initials in permanent marker on my leg that I can't scrub off...THAT should look good with the new dress I bought for my best friend's wedding reception tomorrow! : (

Anyways, back to happy parties! This is the last of the three baby showers I've been working on the last few weeks. My friend Leah enlisted me to make some decorations for a shower she is throwing tomorrow. The baby's parents already know the baby is a girl and that they are naming her Ashley. The shower is kind of planned around the "Jungle Luv" bedding that Baby Ashley will have in her room from Babies R Us. Here is a pic that Leah sent me of the bedding:
I was a little worried that I wouldn't be able to find animals and make it girly enough, but I was wrong! I found the PERFECT paper to match the bedding. Leah wanted the banner to be able to be used at the shower, but also when the baby came home from the hospital. So here is Baby Ashley's welcome banner:


and the door sign:

Leah also couldn't find the perfect plates, napkins, and cups to match their theme, so she asked if she got some solid colored paper products if I could dress up her cups. She wanted them to be assorted so that people could tell which one was theirs...great idea! So after buying a few cups to get the right angle...voila!...here is how they look:
Kind of like wine charms, only for punch! I love when customers (or friends!) come up with new ideas. I have a couple of items in the works to add to my POLKADOT COLLECTION that people have suggested that I add. Please feel free to contact me if you have ideas for something you don't see in my shop!

You're invited...again!

So I said I was going to break up the invitations entry between two nights so that they didn't get too long, so here we go!

These invitations I made for my niece, Addie, for her 1st birthday coming up in a few weeks. I didn't even know if I was going to blog about them for the simple fact I cannot take credit for the basic idea of the invitations at all. I made them from absolute scratch on my computer (even the candy graphics were drawn by me) and changed a lot of the wording and such, but they are a "girly" version of an invitation my sister-in-law Lindsey found online. It was a site where you could go to help pick the invitations and favors and such for Max Sutter, son of The Bachelorette's Trista and Ryan Sutter. They were ultimately not the ones that the Sutters used for Max's birthday, but Lindsey loved them and since we were sending them basically to our family, I said sure! The whole theme of Addie's birthday (and Max's too) is "Candyland", inspired by the song you should hear playing right now. Singing it to Addie always makes her giggle. I don't know everything Lindsey is planning, but from the things I've seen and what she's told me, it's going to be SO CUTE!

So here are the invitations for Lindsey and Mike's little SWEETIE...
They sent along the photo they had taken of her and her lollipop inside the invitation...adorable!

I'm going to show you these next two invitations, but keep the inspiration and party details for later, since I am in the process of making the rest of the partyware for both parties.

This customer (who oddly ended up being a very good college friend of one of my neighbors, though she lives in a different state and found me through Etsy!) is having a party for her 1 year old son, Carter, and her 4 year old son, Jack. She wanted a bit of a sophisticated twist on a circus animals theme.

When I blog about her whole package, I'll show you the pic she sent for inspiration, but for now, you'll have to just imagine it. Can you see the circus tent in there?


And the last ones for tonight are the ones I sent out for my son Beckett's 1st birthday. Of course I will have MANY more pictures of this one in a few weeks!

Just as a side note...I am having knee surgery tomorrow morning so I don't know if that will make it more likely that I'll be on the computer tomorrow night or less likely! It all depends on how I feel. Right now I am just thinking of what I should ask my husband to buy for me for my "last supper"...yes I know I already ate my real supper tonight with my family, but I can't eat after midnight and probably won't be eating until about 4:00 tomorrow afternoon, so I feel I need something really good to make it last! He's waiting for the Twins game to get over and he promised he'd run to the grocery store...any suggestions??