First Birthday Invitations

I decided to have personalized invitations made for Brynley's first birthday.  I saw one a friend of mine Ryan made for her son's first birthday here and loved it so much I got inspired to do the same.  She even gave me tips and advice on how to do mine. On a side note, she is the one that took our maternity pictures....amazing! What intrigued me was how cheap they were. The only thing I did differently, however, was I did not actually make the invitation on photoshop like she did, I went the easier route and found one I liked on etsy and tweaked it a little bit. This is the one I found that I loved so much.

I didn't have a set theme per say. I knew I wanted vintage, lace, pinks, purples, teals, and butterflies. So I called it a vintage butterfly theme.

The first thing I did was change the colors a bit.  I loved the colors that were already on it and they matched the party color scheme, but the picture I had of Brynley in her dress didn't have pink or turquoise in it so I didn't think it would mesh right. I also could have just changed her picture to black and white and not change the colors at all. I chose not to do this because I wanted to show the vibrant colors of her dress and the balloons would not have had an impact in black and white either. Since her dress had purple in it, I decided on a purple border instead of the pink and I loved it.  And it just so happened that the outline of the little butterfly was purple so it was just meant to be.  I decided to leave the address info box turquoise because it matched the butterfly. I then changed the wording in the bottom right corner and lastly the font.

I decided to put a picture on the back as well.  I also stole this idea from Ryan. Such a clever idea to have a picture for the family as a keep sake.  We all know most invitations just get tossed, but this way they have a picture on the back to keep and frame. Genius!

So here was the final invitation:

Front                             

    Back                             

I intended on getting them printed at vista print because of their quality printing and good pricing.  But because I am the worlds best procrastinator I waited too long and would not get them back with enough time to mail them out if I ordered through them.  After much investigating, I came across boomerang printing after finding out that The Inviting Place in Tulsa uses them to print some of their things. I figured if a place that is dedicated to making beautiful invitations and cards uses them surely they are good quality.  I had to drive down to Tulsa to get them but I emailed them my proofs that morning and they were done by the afternoon. They even made small tweaks to the size for free.

So there you have it.  Brynley's 1st birthday invitations. So worth the extra time and energy. :)