Matryoshka Baby Shower: Invitation Reveal!

Yesterday I showed you all the inspiration I got from the awesome matryoshka invitations on pinterest. I put that all together to make A&O's invitations, which I have to say I'm really happy with.

It's not super-easy to see from these pictures, but the teal doll is slightly raised from the background using mounting squares. I double the thickness for the blue doll to raise her a little higher than the teal one. In person the invitation has a lot of dimension.

I used a tiny brad to secure an oval over the pregnant mommy's tummy. After putting a few together I went back and loosened the brads- folding back just the tips of the ends- so that the oval swung more freely. I was worried that otherwise no one would think to move it and see the little bun hiding inside.

Although the graphics I purchased were lovely, I wanted the faces to be more feminine like the original inspiration. I don't have any fancy editing programs, nor do I know much about graphic design. This is where I tell you my big shameful secret: I do all my photo manipulation in Paint. That's right. Paint. The old school little program that comes standard on any PC. I just made little circles for the eyes, added a curved line for the eyelashes, fiddled with some lip shapes for a while and there you go. Oh, I also changed the color of the hair and changed the hairline on the baby to look more like a little boy.

So there you go, friends. You don't need to spend lots of money. I paid $4 for the original clipart. The background papers were $7 for two packages at Joann's. They were precut in the two different sizes. Brads were something like $2 and the little bling we added was just a $1 pack of stick-on rinestones from Michael's. The cream paper, embroidery floss for the bow, mounting squares, glue sticks and the photo paper I used for the dolls were all from my stash. Probably the most expensive part were the envelopes we got from PaperSource. The invitations were 4.75 by 6.5 or something, so we had to use 5x7 envelopes.

Has pinterest inspired any of your crafty endeavors?