Saturday, July 31, 2010

Lightning McQueen Party Invitations

For those that don't know, Logan is my nephew and he is turning 2 this year. My sister's original plan was to do nothing at all. Well, I just can't have that! So I volunteered myself to put together a party for him and on only two weeks time. Eek! When I plan parties, I generally start months in advance so this is really putting the pressure on but you know what they say..."No pressure; no diamonds"
When kids are this young its really hard to pick out their favorite thing because 1) they can't communicate with you what they want and 2) they are usually interested in SO many different things. I guess coming at this from an outside view, planning the party is easier there. I don't know everything he likes but I do know what he likes when he comes to my house: Lightning McQueen!

So, first things first, I had to get the invitations done and handed out or in the mail. This is the process I am currently working on. I did a google search of "Lightning Mcqueen birthday invitations" and I almost always choose to look at images as opposed to anything on the web. And that's how I found this great idea! I'll admit, at first I was a little intimidated but anything worth having or doing takes a little effort. I like the invitations that she made but I come from a small rural area and the chances of finding the stamp she used: impossible. I racked and racked my brain trying to think of how I could get Lightning McQueen onto this invitation. My first thought was, if all else fails, I could print out an image and use that but my printer is out of color ink and my checking account is out of money. Then I thought, "I bet I could find some neat Lightning McQueen stickers at the party store." You know, the little favors they always have; well they didn't have them! I even went to a Walmart (in a bigger town because our Walmart never has anything). Yup, nothing there either. So, as a last minute SOS I went to our Walmart and low and behold...Lightning McQueen stickers. You can mark that as a first!
So, without further ado: here are the invitations.




Well, I don't think it turned out too bad at all. I must say I'm a teensy weensy bit upset because I don't get to use this invitation style on one of my own parties first. Oh, the sacrifices I make for my nephew! What I love most about this invitation is that it can be changed to accommodate any theme: just mix up the colors and embellishments.
When I first bought supplies to make the invites I made the mistake of going to Michaels to get my cardstock. Now, there is nothing wrong with getting your cardstock from here but for something like this, especially concerning a party in my family, it is outrageously expensive. I spent $10 just on the cardstock and originally only bought enough to make about 10 invites. But that is nowhere near enough invites; I'm estimating it at 30ish. When I realized late last night that I wouldn't have enough I dug thru my scrapbooking supply and pulled out some red and yellow cardstock. You'll never guess how much it would have cost me if I would have used this brand from the beginning: $8 for all 30 and with cardstock to spare! For $4 at Walmart you can buy a package of primary colors cardstock. It has about 50 sheets in it between red, blue, yellow and orange. That and a package of black cardstock for the same price was all I needed (and a little bit of computer paper).
Here's the supplies I used:


Note: I did not use the blue or green, it just got stuck in my supply pile. I got the checkered paper off my computer. See the stickers in the top corner? I couldn't decide which ones I liked best so I bought both designs (and good thing I did!) and at $1/package, I'm not out a whole lot of money.


Ultimately I chose to use the stickers on the left for the invitation. I really like the way they look. The white border really makes them pop out on black background. As for the stickers on the right, I loved the idea of rolling the utensils in napkins and this really tied it all together:


What you can't tell from the picture is that the paper band that is holding the napkin in place is black and white checkers.

With only 12 days of planning left, I feel like I have a pretty good start! Thanks for checking it out!



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