"PEAS IN A POD" (Part 1)

First and foremost, Congrats to Julie and Ken on the birth of their two bea-U-ti-ful baby girls earlier this month! Yay!


As promised, here is the first look at the projects that I created for my best friend Julie's baby shower. The complete party ensemble included invitations for the adults, invitations for the younger girls, charm holders (also for the younger guests), thank-you note cards, favors with hand-cut bag toppers, three different game cards, and decorated prize pails. I also designed a thank you card (which could also double as a gift card holder) for the woman who baked the mini cupcakes that I served instead of cake.


When I began planning for this shower, I knew the proud parents-to-be were going to have twin girls. So I began my search for a theme at that source of all knowledge... the Internet. I wanted to go with a twins theme, and after much (much, MUCH!) research, I finally narrowed it down to "Noah's Ark" or "Peas in a Pod." I really liked the "Noah's Ark" idea... (you know... "Two by Two") and I thought I could easily find decorations and prizes (animal-shaped balloons, beanie babies, etc...). But then I thought about creating 30+ ark-shaped invites... and my DH (Dear Hubby) pointed out that the "Two by Two" is the mom and dad, not the babies... So I did a mock-up design of a "Two Peas in a Pod" invitation, decided it was uber-cute, and went with my new theme.

The inspiration for the cover of my invite came from a "Two Peas" baby photo album that I came across online. It used buttons as the "peas" and I loved that idea for its added dimension. So I designed my own peapod in which to nestle my little shell buttons. My original design was entirely monochromatic in green and white. It wasn't until after I completed all the invitations and started working on the coordinating items that I introduced yellow as an accent color.

For the invite itself, I knew I had a lot of information that I wanted to include - the event data, directions to the location with a map, and registry info. So I took a cue from formal wedding invitations and decided to split the information up onto separate cards. For visual interest, I chose to stagger the heights of the cards, and based the size of the cards on the amount of information each needed to contain. The directions card is actually the longest card -- it unfolds to reveal a map and text. Finally, I created a pocket in which I could tuck my cards.

Assembly was actually rather simple. I designed the outer card so that I could get two cards from a single 12" square piece of cardstock. Once printed, I simply folded it up once to create a pocket and then in half to form my card. Creating the inner cards was simply a matter of printing, trimming, folding and collating. As you can imagine, the cover was the most time-consuming. I printed multiple designs on white cardstock, trimmed them to size, cut a slot for my "peas" using a craft knife, attached my buttons using glue dots, and finally adhered it to my cardstock with foam tape.

Finished Size 6" x 4.5" (closed).
Check back soon for additional "Peas in a Pod" projects...