Pepper Design Blog

Liv’s 1st Birthday: DIY Invites & Envelope Liners

Back with a few more details from Liv’s 1st birthday. When it came to creating little invitations for her party I was a big time procrastinator. Actually, it was during my few days off between Christmas and New Years that it suddenly dawned on me that her birthday was just a few weeks away! and we needed to get something in the mail asap.

It was fairly simple to throw these guys together quickly. I used Photoshop to add some cute, bold text to two of my favorite photos of Liv (I couldn’t pick between the two! So half of the invitees received one and half the other), but you could use one of the free programs reviewed here to do the same.

I sandwiched that photo between a smaller red card (bought a set of red envelopes and matching cards at Michaels and printed the party info in fun fonts directly on to the red inserts, then cut them to size) and a piece of brown construction paper.

Inspired by this creative girl’s Christmas card and this beautiful invite from Pinterest, I tied up the bundle with Martha Stewart’s striped baking twine (found in the scrapbooking department in a pack of 6).

The other half of the fun was creating envelope liners that for me really made the entire invite. I love the peak of red and white striped paper and it tied in perfectly with the rest of the party. It was a little teaser of what was to come!

To make the envelope liners (by the way, they’ve been on the back of my mind since seeing this adorable version), I created a simple template of the inside of the envelope (trace the shape of the envelope on to thicker paper, cut out and then snip off about 1/3″ of an inch from each side) and then cut out about 25 from 12×12 striped scrapbooking sheets of paper from Michaels. I used double sided scrapbooking tape to adhere into place.

My last addition was a failed attempt. I had originally hoped to sandwich the information card and photo of Liv between a piece of paper bag brown construction paper (that was the specific color I was on the hunt for ) and a top piece of the same size but with cute, colorful bunting (a la a few images from my Pinterest board on Liv’s party).

Sewing paper is seeeeeeew difficult (see that crazy stitching above?), and after a half hour of testing, tearing, tangling and tormenting I decided to omit the addition.

But I was thrilled with the results of the invites and we got those puppies in the mail just in time to notify friends and family that there was a par-tay coming up!

Total cost was about $.25 per invite and from the time I hit ‘send’ on my online Costco photo order to the time I picked up my pics at our local Costco, all of the supplies at Michaels and assembled the invites, it took just a day or two to get them finished and in the mail.

And just for fun, here was my assembly workstation:

Wait, you don’t have a toilet in your living room? Just us?

Bedtime Stories Baby Shower Part 2: Fabric & Ribbon Bunting

Back with a few more details from the Bedtime Stories baby shower that I shared last week. I’m all about handmade decorations so two of the little projects I worked on leading up to the shower included a set of fabric flags and a little ‘ribbon strand’ to hang onesies from (which was our shower craft project).

So I’m still not exactly sure what the major difference is between fabric bunting, pennants and flags are… but I’m pretty sure they’re all basically describing this:

We’ll call them flags today .

I made a no-sew version for Liv’s nursery out of left over fabric remnants from her room decor a while back and had used a fusible iron-on hem tape to put it all together.

But I was pretty sure there was an even easier no-sew way to make a really large set of flags for this party.

What ended up making the bunting so super simple was the basic stitch at the bottom of each to create the individual flags. No sewing machine, not even an iron!

I opted for a light weight quilting cotton from Joanns and raided the quilting squares remnant boxes that they usually have throughout their store. Each quilting square made roughly three flags (which started as diamonds… more on that soon) and I probably had somewhere around 40 when all were cut.

I split the 40ish flags between two long lengths of thin twine to make two different strands. I know I’ll use these for lots and lots of different types of parties (they’re just really fun to throw up and around whether they’re indoors or out) so I kept the colors soft and gender neutral.

One set was strung over our buffet in the dining room (above) and one was added to the fireplace mantle.

But back to putting these together…

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Super Simple Fabric Party Flags
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Materials: fabric remnants, scissors, needle & thread, twine (or ribbon or string), white glue (such as Elmer’s)

We first cut up the fabric remnants into large diamonds and folded the diamonds in half over the long length of twine.

To keep the sandwiched diamonds in place, we added a simple X stitch at the bottom corner of the triangle with a needle and thread.

I found thin twine at Joann’s and thought that it gave the flags a nice little shabby chic look. You could use ribbon though (like I did for the sturdier bunting for Liv’s nursery) or really any kind of string you have lying around.

When the flags were strung up we noticed that they started to slide back on top of each other, so as a last minute solution a little dot of Elmers glue was placed on each end of the flag where the fabric meets the twine. Held the flags in place like a charm!

My awesome group of lady friends came over one night to help me assemble all 40 flags which made the process quick and easy, and Liv’s babysitter saved the day when she helped me add dots of glue to the edges of each flag after we realized (last minute) that the flags tended to slide back on top of each other without the adhesive. I was plum out of time and it was super helpful (yay for naptimes).

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Ribbon Flags
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Materials: ribbon of varying widths and colors, fabric strips, twine, baby clothes pins (found at craft stores), onesies or other fun items to showcase

The second bunting-ish project was a ribbon strand that held various lengths of folded over and loosely knotted ribbon, fabric strips and finished onesies from the group craft project (more on that to come – such an easy and fun shower activity!).

This one was so easy to assemble and while I don’t have the best pictures of it, the project is a fun addition as a backdrop to any shower or birthday. I’ve seen these strands strung up behind dessert tables before (without onesies) to add a little color – beautiful! The only bummer is that it requires SO much ribbon. My little strand here was four or five ribbon spools from Joann’s and I’m glad I planned on mixing in the onesies because that’s what really filled the gaps.

The bonus is that the ribbon can be used again and again for all sorts of projects, or even as bunting for a future event.

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For the Bedtime Stories Part 1 post, jump out to this link. Hope to post one more segment soon with details about the iron-on/embroidery onesie craft project (and how easy they were to make as a group!) and my easy-to-assemble solution (without destroying your plates) for tiered food stands.

A Wintery Stencil Project

Hope you had a wonderful and relaxing Christmas! We’re trying to still keep it low key around here as we soak in as much holiday as possible before the New Year. This is always one of the best weeks.

I wanted to share with you one of the handmade gifts that I put together this Christmas. Oh I had high hopes of sharing this project with everyone before Christmas! but… you know how that goes. There I was on the 23rd of December after everyone had gone to bed and I’m finishing up spray painting stencils by backyard patio lights at my in-laws. Haha! Motivated to create a truly handmade present for family this Christmas, I had started this project several weeks earlier but as luck would have it I finished just in the nick of time.

Simply Spray contacted me back in November about a product review regarding their fabric spray paint. Immediately the wheels started turning with creative present ideas for family and friends this holiday season. My initial idea was to track down basic white flour sack towels and several wintery stencils to design some fun kitchen gear for our Grandmas, moms and aunts.

After much searching, I stumbled upon inexpensive white flour sack towels at Rite-Aid (I think they were about $1 a piece), and several sets of patterned cloth napkins and solid-colored oven mits at Target. For the record, I also scooped up a couple of white and tan table runners from Ikea but I haven’t finished those yet (sigh).

Simply Spray sent me several different types of fabric paint to try out. They carry an upholstery spray (think spraying an entire chair or even couch), a fabric spray (for use with a stencil, soft to the touch, soaks into the fabric) and stencil paint (more of a silkscreen effect staying on top of the fabric). For these projects I used the stencil spray in gold glimmer, silver glimmer and textured white.

Creating a stencil was a bit more challenging. I first took advantage of Kevin’s seriously honed x-acto knife skills (from years of architectural modeling) and printed snowflake designs on thick white paper.

But the process was time consuming (poor Kev) and the stencils lasted for just one use. Where oh where could I find the outline of a snowflake to use as a stencil? That’s when I thought of a cricut machine and ended up at a scrapbooking shop where I learned that you can use chipboard (super sturdy) in a diecut machine! Perfect. For about $.30 a pop I made 10 ish snowflake stencils out of chipboard.

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Stenciling with Fabric Paint
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Materials: cloth napkins/tea towels, chipboard stencil, spray adhesive, Simply Spray Stencil Paint, cardboard (or hard surface to lay out fabric on), newspaper to keep your space clean! plastic gloves to keep your fingers clean – optional

To stencil the snowflakes onto my cloth napkins and tea towels, I first gave the back of the stencil a quick douse of spray adhesive to keep my stencil in place on my fabric and to help prevent bleeding. (Note – it’s best to do this holding the stencil up rather than spraying at a surface such as this countertop – but for picture purposes here’s the example)

Apply your sticky stencil to your fabric and follow the instructions on the stencil spray can for application (basically, shake shake shake). Before you spray your actual napkins, towels, etc be sure to test the spray out on scrap cloth. A few lessons learned from scrap cloth: the cans drip and they can cause giant droplets on your fabric and the spray is not always even. It’s easy to compensate for once you play around a bit.

A quick email to Simply Spray resulted in the suggestion of starting and ending the spray ‘off’ of the fabric (such as in a paper towel), this helped a ton. A couple of other tips from me would include: 1. the white textured spray has quite the ‘spray’ that will end up all over your fabric regardless of your aim – use chipboard to cover the entire piece except for the stencil area to prevent any sort of splatter (not an issue with the gold or silver glimmer spray), 2. the gold and silver glimmer spray tended to bleed quite a bit – I found it best to get about 6-8″ above fabric and quickly swoosh over stencil area with a light flow (the bleed doesn’t go away, the watermark look will dry and stay), 3. I needed roughly two cans to finish six cloth napkins and three tea towels which I didn’t anticipate, so I did end up making a Michaels run half way through the project.

Let dry in the sun for several hours to cure, then wrap up and gift!

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I played around with different materials, including a terry dish towel, dark brown napkins and even several oven mitts.  I attempted a bit of lettering but the white bled through around the edges.

In the end, the projects that I ended up gifting and loving the most were the white flour sack tea towels and the light blue patterned napkins I found at Target that I covered in a few subtle silvery snowflakes.

The tea towels each received three or so small snowflakes and two large in one corner so that about 1/3 of the towel was covered with a random pattern.

The napkins were painted with three ish snowflakes in one corner in a random pattern. Having some snowflakes just half on the napkin helped to create a random and pretty look.

It was a fun project! Simply Spray is revolutionary in that it’s the one and only aerosol fabric spray paint brand (I’ve heard the spray bottle versions are super messy) and it’s really fun to work with. Be prepared to mess up on a few of your fabrics (I bought eight cloth napkins to create six) and make sure to set up a station covered in newspaper for painting and drying. I think my mom, mom-in-law, aunt and cousin dug their new towels, napkins and mitts.