Besides being a Drift Queen, I do have other hobbies.  I’m known as the Invitation/Paper Diva.  I jump at any chance I can get to help friends with wedding invites, baby shower invites, favors etc.  It all started back in 2001 when I got a job doing accounting for a high-end invitation design-house & factory.  They specialized in the super fancy “letterpress” style of printing, which uses the same methods from 500 years ago…where they ink rollers and emboss (using a metal plate fitted with your choice of design) into a thick piece of cardstock…you get beautiful indentations that are inked in color. Like this:

Over the years I kept the knowledge near and dear.  At my age, everyone is either getting married or having a baby.  It makes some people sick, but for me, I think “yay paper time!”

Working in old town Pasadena, almost daily, I trot into Papersource to peruse.  I’ve accumulated quite the collection of paper ranging from fancy metallic cardstock to Japanese washi paper– its getting out of hand!  What better way to spend my evenings from time-to-time actually putting the paper to work and helping friends out.

Current Project – Baby Shower Invitations & matching favors



I found these My Mind’s Eye robot-themed 12×12 chipboards (thick cardboard with pre-punched shapes)

Gathered some A6 Notecards on Stardream Metallic sapphire & antique gold from Papersource (of course)

Laser printed a robot-themed type-face (eurostile) on ultra smooth white cardstock

Put it all together and voila…

Hah, it wasn’t that easy!  But it was definitely fun putting these together.  Every single invitation is its own unique piece of art.

Favors – a work in progress

I didn’t want to go too typical and do plastic 5oz baby bottles filled with candy…so I looked around at small boxes and jars.  I was lost.  Then at Target of all places and Benson of all people, helped me find these fantastic mason jars.  Elegant enough for a wedding…but my friend deserves a higher caliber favor at his baby shower right?  So at $4.19 per 4 pack…I thought it was a great deal.

Benson came up with a great idea to fill it with Legos.  I was about to run with it.  As I tested it out, the jars were way too elegant for Legos.

I ended up using the dad-to-be’s favorite candies: Jelly Bellies & Lemonheads.  I’m still tracking down a good deal on Lemonheads…but the Jelly bellies are done:

Candies seem so cliche…but what the hell else are you going to fill the jar with when you’re on a budget?  I figure this way the guests can enjoy the candies then re-purpose the jar as an apothecary jar (like a q-tip jar) or a jar for the loose nuts and washers that are constantly left over after working on their 240sx.  Dual purpose!!!  Yummy candies and something they can keep and use.

Mounted to the top of the lid is a 3″ circle cutout of matching robot paper.  To get a clean circle cut (I am NOT using an exacto to do this!!), I purchased a 3″ Fiskars punch which was luckily on sale for 30% off at Joann.

Next is the tag.  Its a work-in-progress.  I’ve purchased a tag punch.  We’ll see how that looks using stardream sapphire tags inked with a Sakura Gelly roll gel ink pen in gold.

T-minus one week to finish.  Wish me luck!

PS. I hate my squealing brakes.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 12th, 2010 at 11:34 pm and is filed under Paper Diva. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.