Invitations made for a young Knight

It’s not a secret that I love creative projects and when a an opportunity for a new project comes my way, I just can’t say no. So when our neighbor came last week to show me her ideas for invitations to her sons birthday party, I could of course not bring myself to say no when she asked me if I could help!:) and I’m saying that with a smily face, just because it took her about three rounds of asking me for ideas or if I might be able to do part of them for her, before she actually asked if I could make the invitations my project. Sometimes all we need to do is ask!:)

Little did I know, that invitations to a 4 year olds birthday party are no longer just a cute little cards and something that’s easy to make. I remember when my mom used to make invitations to my birthday parties when I was little and they were usually made of colorful paper that she cut out in different shapes and forms, and as I grew older they were printed out after a little fun editing in Word. But I guess the world of invitations has evolved, because these 11 little invitations took me about 9 hours to make!:)

This is the ideas that our neighbor brought to me. The little 4 year old wanted “Knights” to be the theme for his birthday party, so these are both little shields cut out in a 5 mm thick plywood, which are decorated with different types of castle motifs. But I found them both to be a little unfinished and a little dark in color for a little boys party, so I decided to change them up a little!

I started with painting the shields, front and back, with some left over grey paint that I had. This way they would get that feeling of  being a metal shield.

Since I knew I wanted to add a lot of decorations to them, I made sure they were really nice and dry before I started decorating.

I always find it important to do a little search around the house before I start, just because there’s always little things left over from other projects that can be used or you might just get a good idea on your way!

I decided I wanted to keep the idea of having a castle as the main object, so drew my own version on paper to make as a stencil.

Then I used my new stencil to make 11 little castles out of green felt fabric. I decided to use felt because it’s something that I already had and because I think felt gives a more playful look than a cotton or just green paper.

I also used felt, but this time in white, to cut a little “4” for each castle.

I wanted to give the invitation a good mix of textures, so I found some old thick grained sandpaper, that I’m using to make little roofs for the castle. Make sure to use an old pair of scissors when you cut the sandpaper, just because it’s really not a very scissor friendly material to work with.

Here I’m coloring pearls from an old fake pearl necklace with the use of permanent markers. The little red pearls will be added to the top of a little flagpoles that I will be adding to the invitations.

The flagpole does of course also need a flag, so I’m using some checkered white and red fabric (my mom’s old Christmas curtains!:) ) to create a little flag. I actually used my sewing machine to sew around the edges of the flag, but I think sewing them by hand or just using your clothing iron to fold the edges and then taping them down could work very well too.

I used Word to make little name tags to add to my flags and I googled clipart “Knight” and “Princesse” to find little cute cartoon like knights and princesses, these I will add in the window of the castle. This way each little invitation will be specialized to each little friend with Princess or Knight in front of their name and with a little princess or knight in the window.

Here we have my little flags, flagpoles (made of an old flower rod), the sandpaper roofs, the name tags, the little red pearls for the top of the flagpoles and the little white 4’s. I’m ready to decorate each little invitation and I’m doing so trying out all different kinds of glues, tapes and other adhesive material that I have. I didn’t really find one product that worked better than the other, so I actually made a test invitation before I started on the actual once, just so that I knew everything would stick and that it would look nice after it dried too.

And here they are!! Invitations made for little Knights and little Princesses. On the back side there’s plenty of space for mom to add the written part of the invitation.

Invitation for little Princess Anna!

And here they are, all the 11 little invitations! Now we just have to hope they get out in time for the little 4 year old Knight to celebrate his birthday!

I think all creative projects are fun even when they take a huge amount of time to do, because in the end it’s so much fun to be able to share your work with others!

-Christine