Cowgirl Birthday Invitation

My daughter's 5th birthday is coming up. In my mind this is a big one! The one that sends her off to school. Next will be 8, then 12, then 16, then 18........but for now I'm just trying to make it through the 5th.

She loves horses and dinosaurs and dolls. We did a dinosaur cake last year. I thought we would concentrate on having horses in our party somehow since there will be boys at the party. We can throw some dolls in there for the 6th party. Maybe a retro Barbie party?

So I needed an invitation. Nothing cutesy. Something with a rustic feel. I scoured Google Images (love that!) for some ideas and stumbled across this invite from Roxter Designs'. She has an Etsy shop and sells some very cute invitations.

But I want to spend my money on the party and not the invitations so I opened up Photoshop and scoured my digital papers to see if I could make it work. I also took my daughter to a friends place for a little photo shoot. I'm a very amateur photographer. All of my shots are in auto mode. I took over 200 pictures and managed to get 47 that I liked.

Digital Paper: Dana Zarling's Average Joe No. 2 (no. 5, 8, & 9)

For the cardstock under the photo: I cut a blank card in half. Then I used CTMH stamp pad Barn Red and Desert Sand to dress it up a bit. My local craft stores were closed so I decided to just dig around my craft room to come up with something on the cheap.

My friend Samara suggested I use some of my straw (rafia) for the top of the invite. I didn't have any straw left but I did have some red mini rafia. I punched two holes, threw on some grommets, threaded rafia through and then unwound it. I also stuck a tiny bit of double sided tape under the ribbon to help it lay a little flatter.

I had to match the envelope and why not since I had the stamp pads out. You can see the shape of the stamp pad on the envelope. This is where those spray inks would have come in handy. But the lines don't bother me one bit. Rustic, right?

Hand stamped 'Cowgirl Up' on the back of the envelope.

Front of envelope needed a little something also. I had borrowed a friend "Paper Dolls" cartridge to cut out the cutest clothes for a baby shower the other day. I cut out cowboy hats and then added a silver brad for the Sheriff's star. Wish I had a star brad to put on the hat but I was going budget friendly with the invitations.

I also stamped each child's name above the hat.

This invitation cost me less than $2.00 to make because I used items that I already had on hand. I printed the photo that is on the invitation at Costco.

Happy Trails!