Krafts and Konfections: Clown Party Invitations

One of my favorite people on this earth is my sweet niece Camryn. Since the very first time I laid eyes on her, I've been totally in love with her. I say this all the time - but I don't know how it would be possible for me to love my own children any more than I love my nieces and nephews. Since Cam was a very young toddler, I've noticed a very special connection with her that I cannot explain in words. She affectionately refers to me as "Mousie Mommy" and I really hope her "Mousie-phase" doesn't end any time soon! I'm sure my closeness with Cam has a lot to do with how close I am to her mother (my sister), Sherry. Sherry is 13 years my elder and was like a 2nd mom to me growing up. As an adult, I appreciate her even more now that we are such great friends! She is the person I look up to the most in this world and I wouldn't be who I am today with her powerful maternal influence.

Sweet Cami and I

Camryn was born on December 23 - that's right, just 2 days before Christmas. Sherry's original due date was January 9 and I can still hear her say, 'Oh no! I feel so bad, her birthday is going to be so close to Christmas!' (Bear in mind, Sherry said this somewhere between her water breaking and all of us rushing to get her in the car to go to the hospital!) Since her birthday is so close to Christmas, Sherry devised a plan to allow Cam to celebrate her birthday with her friends - celebrate her half birthday in the summer!

Camryn's half birthday party was in my sister's highly qualified hands, but I had the honor of creating the invitations! (Yah! My favorite part of any party!) The theme was 'Circus' and so the search began for high quality circus-y images that didn't include some scary clown. Since clowns are innately scary, imagine my surprise when I came across this adorable clown girl! She was the perfect image to carry through the party. I used the image on the 'thank-you' tags for the goody bags (left) and on the invitations (right - although, this was a first draft). I positively love 'her'!

Using some gate-fold cards I had on hand from a previous project, I created the invitation below. The Clown Girl was matted to shiny green paper (positively my favorite paper of all time - the Thank-you tags were matted on this paper as well). One side of the image was glued (left) with the other side (right) Velcro'd to keep the invite closed.

Here is a view from inside the gate-fold. I included the pertinent details of the party in the larger middle section, with other notes on the side panels. The invitations that went out to guests had eyelets attached to close the top of the center, then the ribbon was looped through. Labor intensive, but it helped finished the look quite well!

Just for fun, I thought I'd include a pic of the cupcake stand. What would a party be without the cupcakes? One of the [many] things my sister has taught me is to include various icing designs when including cupcakes for parties. I tend to be a bit uniform and matchy-matchy with things, but I like the visual variety this route offers. I incorporate this into all of my cupcake designs now! (And, it's a nice gesture to those people who do not particularly care for a cupcake drowning in frosting, whoever those crazy people might be.)