Shower Invites are Done :)

    Yay! My friends and I made 50 invitations yesterday and they look great! I hope the mom to be loves them. Luckily, they weren't too hard to make and we had a great time. So, drumroll for which one won out....Emily picked the vertical design with the brown background!
    If you'd like to make one just like it, here's how we made it....but you don't have to repeat it 49 more times :)
    First, cut a piece of The Paper Studio 12x12 paper in brown polka dot into a 6" x 4 1/2" rectangle. Then cut a  piece of white smooth cardstock to 5 1/2" x 4 1/4" and ink the background with Tumbled Glass and Peeled Paint Distress Inks. To mask off each section when inking, cut a piece of cardstock at a curve by hand and place each section down while inking. But, before inking the blue, stamp the baby giraffe from the Mama Elephant Nursery Deco set on the hill and on a piece of masking paper with Memento Dye Ink in Black. Cut the giraffe from the masking paper with an exacto knife leaving a small border around the stamp and place the mask over the stamped image on the white cardstock.
    To make the big giraffes I had to get a bit creative. The Critters on the Savannah set from Lawn Fawn comes with the giraffe facing right, but not left, so I stamped it and scanned it as a .jpeg then mirror rotated it in MS Word and resized it until it matched the stamped size exactly when printed. The ink finish looks a bit different but, when the giraffes are colored with two slightly different color schemes, it looks somewhat intentional...I hope. I colored the giraffes with Copic markers and used YR21 (which I completely ran out of....) or Y21 and Y35. Then for the spots I started with E33 and then added E15 and E18 for shading. The baby giraffe was colored with Y21, Y35, E51 and E33. I cut out the giraffes with the matching die from Lawn Fawn and my Big Shot machine.
    To create the strips on the side, I cut a strip of yellow gingham paper to 1/2" and a piece of chocolate brown to 1/4" and a piece of orange polka dot paper to 1/4" after punching the edge with an EK Success border punch. All of the papers were from The Paper Studio and adhered with an EK Success tape runner since the adhesive is clear and the strips were so thin.
    For the last detail, emboss the "Baby Makes Three" sentiment with Versamark ink and white embossing powder. and cut the ends into a banner either by hand or with the corner of a square punch and adhere it to the card with foam dots for some dimension.
   I really think they turned out great and I'm really happy that they are done!!