A Princess and The Pea Party Invitation

My daughter's 5th birthday was this weekend. We had a lovely Princess and the Pea Party. I am incredibly lucky that one of my favorite people in the world, and the mama of my daughter's good friend is a fantastic photographer! She took the most gorgeous photos - they made me cry. It was two hours of crafting and story telling and good girl friends - those first girlfriends at 5 years old - yummy food and some more crafting and general celebrating. For ME it was worrying that everyone was having fun and happy and not escaping through a back door or something, and before I knew it, it was over. NOW, though, I look at her stunning photos and my memories are of a magical, almost slow motion, perfect two hours of princessy fun! (We also took some photos, but ours pale SO much in comparison, that instead of showing them, I'm going to wait for hers to post here.) I'll share the "getting ready for it" parts, though.

I'll start with the invitation. I ADORE using sewing and fabric in different media. I've made a few invitations this way, but this is by far my favorite so far. Here is a close up of the PEA.(I know it looks funny to blur out our info, but I'm still leery of all of that.) I love the imagery of the towering bed with loads of different fabrics. I knew I wanted the invitations to be tall and thin. Paperzone here in Portland has a line of blank invitations that I keep going back to. The colors are perfect, the weight is great, and I love all of the different proportions they offer. It is called PZ facets. It seems you can't order anything from the website, which is too bad, but if you have one near you, GO.

Here is the first sketch I did:The gorgeous font I used is from Dirt 2. He is SO talented! All of the fonts are free for personal use, or available to purchase for commercial use. I used The Quickest Shift. SO scroll-y and perfect without being too sweet. He also has gorgeous photoshop brushes!! I used a few of the Secret Garden brushes for the details in the bed posts and feet - you can't really see what it is, but I know they are there, and I love them. I can't wait to figure out what to REALLY use them for.

I did a bit of a tutorial on flickr if you are at all interested in making invitations like this. If you want ANY other information, I'm always happy to share.

*Stephanie's photography page had her old blog as the link.  I've updated it to the real one:  http://stephaniebryanphotography.com/ **