Tea Party Invitations

Tea Party Invitations

The Making of…

My theme for this party was a (somewhat) British Afternoon Tea and the colors were spring based with purple, green, and yellow. I wanted the invitations to reflect all of that!

1.  I went to PaperSource and bought a pack of green envelopes, purple premade folded cards, and a giant piece of yellow flowery paper. I think it all cost a total of $15. So, I could have bought premade cards for the same price but then I wouldn’t have a fun project!

I’ve really been into making silhouettes lately so my idea was to put teapot silhouettes on the cards.

2.  I used a picture of a teapot to make my template, which would fit appropriately on the purple card. Then cut the yellow paper into pieces the right size for making the teapots.

3.  Next was tracing the teapots on the back of the yellow paper pieces and cutting them out. Basic scissors work well for this part but ascertain how many invitations you want to make before you start all the tracing and cutting!

4.  Then, using an exacto-knife, cut out the middle part of the teapot handle.

5.  Paste all the teapots onto the purple cards. I jazzed up the purple cards a bit by cutting a wave into the bottom of the card. This would be easier with those shaped scissors but it wasn’t time consuming with regular scissors either.

6.  On the inside of the card I choose to print out the actual invitation with day, date, time, etc on my computer then print and paste it into the card. This should have been faster than handwriting it all but I had a hard time not being OCD about the look of the printed invitation and it ended up being the most time consuming part.

7.  To make the invitations look really fancy, use a calligraphy pen (you know the kind that you can get in craft stores that make it LOOK like you know calligraphy) to write the recipients name.

8.  The final touch is the addition of a tea sachet. I read this idea somewhere online and thought it was brilliant and super cute!

Despite all the steps, and dependant on the number of invitations being made, these invitations only would have taken an hour or so…but I did this between doing a bunch of other stuff so it took me longer.

The final result is a totally customizable and unique card. You could make any silhouette from flowers to faces and the color scheme is easily changeable. Include a sweet touch like a seed packet for a garden party or a rice sachet for a wedding invitation and take the invitation up one more notch!

I had a lot of fun making these invitations and look forward to another invitation project!

PS. All those little inside teapot handle pieces? I made into adorable flowers!








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The Colette Sewing Book Blog Series - Intro

The Colette Sewing Book Blog Series - Intro

            I have been thinking about moving into the wearable clothes arena for a while. I wanted to keep sewing but didn’t want to do costumes. I frequently see fun clothes or fabrics that I would love to wear and I want the power to make them myself and, most importantly, perfectly fitted to my body and personality! This means I need to brush-up on pattern making.

I decided to buy the Colette Sewing book. It’s made for the beginner to intermediate sewer. While I’m no beginner and some of the stuff was old hat some things like proper interfacing was great to read up on. One of my favorite things about the book is that it takes the time to talk about making things that are practical to the your personal wardrobe. I think that reality check is needed because without it I have a feeling I would be pumping out lots of cute dresses with little wearability.

Colette also takes it one step farther by providing several clothing projects from a cute skirt to a fitted dress, with accompanying patterns, which steadily build on the sewers techniques and difficulty skill. I think working through these projects will brush away the sewing cobwebs and keep me focused. I’m pretty excited!

            So I’m going to start a series of blogs, interspersed with everything else, called “The Colette Sewing Book Series” that chronicle each sewing project. I will post the project picture and the fabrics I’m considering for it and you can tell me which fabric you like best!

See you soon!