Going Wild

Last year, my sister was excited to welcome her first grandchild.  She was throwing a big shower, with a jungle theme.  Thankfully, I was able to talk her out of the "Royal Baby" (say it like you're announcing a the king and queen) theme... close one there.  She asked me to make custom invitations for the shower.  I looked around for some inspiration for a while online (including pinterest of course), but everything was pretty cartooney and literal.

A few years ago, I went to a stamp show with my scrapbook buddy, LaVie, and we took a card class from Art Gone Wild using dies that created pop-ups really quick.  Of course, I bought them, and never used them.  Eureka!  I'll use them for the invitations!  I ran the die through my Epic6 machine, then adhered the ends to make the bases for the pop-up.  The die is cool, because it scores where you need to fold the paper, and has varying sizes and widths on one die.  I used heavy, textured, card stock, and I have to say that it was a bit hard to see the scoring on the textured paper, but I worked it out.

The strips before being folded and adhered

I picked up a box of David Tutera kraft cards and envelopes on sale at Joanne's for $5.  But still needed something to give it that jungle theme without slapping animals on it.  Grabbed a bag of rafia, some zebra print paper, and found the perfect wasai tape - giraffe print with a bit of shimmer.

For the front of the invite, I applied a strip of the wasai tape to the bottom, right up to the decorate edge.  Then, I adhered the zebra paper to the top, finishing it off with a few pieces of rafia between the wasai tape and the paper so no seams showed.

I inked the entire card around the edges with some blue ink inside and outside.

I wanted the title to go with the theme, so I chose "We're Wild With Joy," using various sticker letters, outlining the black ones with a white pen so they popped off the patterned paper.

For the inside of the card, I attached three of the pop-up bases inside the card.  I cut out jungle leaves using my Cricut, outling it with a white pen.  A piece of rafia tied around one of the bases to bring it all together.  I used sticker letters for "boy" until I ran out and then cut out letters with my Cricut. 

And voila!  Super cute right?  I left the rest of the invite blank inside so my sister could add the details.  I love how they turned out, and so did my sister.  And look at Aiden, my grand-nephew... isn't he adorbs?