Just for Fun: Invitations

Another little side thing that I like to do is play around in Photoshop--not just to edit photos.

This past week I have been working on invitations for a couples bridal shower that I am throwing in honor of a best friend from high school and her upcoming nuptials. 

The shower is going to be a laid back, outdoors, night time, barbecue with TVs located on the patio for football. The backyard is heavily treed and our plan is to have tree lights, Christmas lights, globes and candles to light up the yard--I think it's going to end up being very mystical. 

The brides colors for her wedding are plum, turquoise and then metallic silver and burlap additions.

With all of that in mind, I wanted the invitations to kinda show that it was going to be an outdoor dinner, pretty casual and of course, I wanted the invite to be unique and quirky like me!  

My favorite shower invite thus far was actually from the second to last wedding I was in. 

They were hand-drawn and then printed on card stock--pretty easy to do.   

My next favorite were done by hand as well, but they were hand painted with watercolor paints and then color copied--a little bit harder to do.

Both ideas involved one thing: drawing by hand.

So, I one day at work when I didn't have much to do, I sat down and started sketching a table. Once I had it to where I liked it, I scanned it into my computer and put it in photoshop.

After a few edits, here's what it turned out to look like:

Pretty cool, ehh?

The next task was to find a tree and chandelier that I liked and try to sketch that and then scan it in as well. The chandelier was pretty easy: 

But the tree on the other hand posed some problems for me. 

I ended up using a photo from google and then editing it in photoshop until I liked the way it looked: 

Then it came time for the text of the invite. This kinda took me awhile because I wanted it all to line up straight and perfectly and have different fonts for variation. 

After several hours of being meticulous, here's what the invite ended up looking like:

I tried other color options and adding/removing the table, like the picture below. 

The bride liked the dark grey color instead of the turquoise so, we decided to remove 

the table because it was too crowded :(

The next idea I had was to do an invite with just text and then a burlap border. Here's an example of what that one turned out to be like: 

After having two options for the bride to choose from, 

I sent her an image like this one explaining what the differences are between the two options:

The bride liked what I sketched and we decided to go with the tree/chandelier invite! I printed them at OfficeMax (I receive a company discount yea!) and then I went to Paper Source to get the perfect sized and color envelopes! 

All in all, for 40 invitations, I paid just under $27 not including postage! 

I am very happy with the results and price!!