It's an Elmo Party Part 3 - Invitations

I finally finished Jaidyn's invitations for her 2nd Birthday Party this month!!!  You would not believe how many issues I had trying to create these, but now that they are finished I am so pleased with the outcome.

I am entering this project in Decorate to Celebrate Challenge #12 - Surprise its a Birthday - you are to create any project to be used as a party decoration (or party supply) for a SURPRISE BIRTHDAY PARTY!!  Let's celebrate EVERYTHING WONDERFUL ABOUT GETTING OLDER (tee hee) with your table decorations, party banners, pennants, yard signs, cupcakes, party favors and more!!  :)

This design was my original design but in order for me to do this I had to have the Cricut cartridge Street Sign Solutions, which I didn't have.  I looked through every cart I have (over 60 carts) and didn't have anything that came even close to looking like the Street Sign font.  I found the cart at the Cricut website and they just happened to have a sale going on, so I bought it and basically saved on  the shipping cost!!!  Once I had the cartridge I was able to start creating.

This is what I used to create this invitation:

• Design Studio - mainly for the street sign to say,"2 Jaidyn's Party" but everything was cut using the Design Studio
• Cricut cartridge Elmo's Party - card cut at 5 1/2, "You're Invited", Elmo face, Pop-up elmo (inside) and the #2 (inside)
• Cricut cartridge Sesame Street Friends - street sign
• Cricut cartridge Street Sign Solutions - used the font to create the,"2 Jaidyn's Party"
• Cricut cartridge George and Basic Shapes - to cut out the pattern paper at 5.1
• Recollections RSVP stamp set - stamp (inside)
• Martha Stewart flocking powder - ladybug

Here's a couple close ups of the front of the invitation:

Now the inside:

I just love the way Elmo pops up...he is just so adorable.  I was so lucky to have found the perfect size stamp for the party info.  It was alot of work but totally worth it. 

On the 1st day my Design Studio wasn't working for what ever reason I have no idea.  I spent like an hour just trying to get things to cut out.  Then it was just a matter of getting everything on the page the way I want to cut it.  Plus I had to size things just perfectly on the sign for it all to fit.  Then it was a matter of putting everything together.  At one point in the day I walked away from my workspace (aka the kitchen) and Jaidyn decided to rip the tape on my Advanced Tape Glidder...I just about lost it, she got sent to the corner and I needed to walk away and count to 10.  I have had issues in the past when trying to re-load the tape and spent an hour one day doing so.  I was lucky it only took one try this time!  My goal was to have this finished Sunday night and in the mail Monday well, now it is Tuesday and they will hit the mail Wednesday!  I will be one of those people late to my own memorial (I plan to have it written in my well that my ashes arrive 15 minutes late).  People who know me will totally get that!  So I worked late Sunday, all day Monday and then finished this afternoon.  Oh, and the BIG KICKER, when I went into my Design Studio this morning I couldn't pull up the file for the invitation...it said,"Cricut Design Studio cannot read that file. The file may be corrupt or empty. The error that Windows returned was: Unable to read beyond the end of the stream."  I immediately bawled my eyes out for like 20 minutes...the hours and time I spent on these invitations just went down the crapper and I wasn't even finished yet.  I still have yet to recover the project but I'm hoping someone on the Cricut message board will be to help me out!

So that's my story...sorry for it being so lengthy but it was a very challenging project and I hope that someday I'll be able to look back at this and laugh a little!

Thanks for checking out my Elmo Invitaion for Jaidyn's 2nd Birthday...have a great day!