My May Birthday Boy's

It is that time of year again.  A time to celebrate the birthday's of both of my boys.  They are May babies - with 2 years and 20 days between them.  We usually have a family birthday party for both of them on a day that falls somewhat in between their actual birthday's.  This year we moved the party to June - life got pretty hectic.  It should work out great though - the weather will be warmer and all the kids should be able to swim!

I'm wondering why I even ask them anymore - but when I did ask if they had a theme in mind it was once again a very firm answer - Baseball!  So this will be the third year for this theme.  We have this little plastic Tiger that we put on the cake - hopefully we can find it again!  This year I decided to play up The Detroit Tigers.  Above you can see my completed invites - here is how I got there! 

When I went to the scrapbook store to look for paper I thought I would go with a loose interpretation of the Tigers.  Tiger colors are orange and blue.  I thought I'd run with orange and more of a teal.  More water inspired to go with the swimming.  I also only wanted to use the color as an accent and use white for most of the invite.  I love the texture of the Bazzill paper and I chose the color avalanche - it is not such a stark white.  My direction took a little turn when I unexpectedly found this ...

We went to a Tiger's game on the night that followed my paper shopping and when getting napkins for our hot dogs this is what they had loaded in the napkin holders.  I don't ever remember them having fun napkins.  They were always plain brown.  This shows that you never know where you will find inspiration.  I LOVE the napkins.  I'm such a dork that this excites me.  And yes, sorry Tiger Stadium - I left with some extra's.  You traded my fave Granderson though so really we are nowhere near even!  I ended up making a copy of the napkin for use on the invite.  It turned out nice because the texture of the napkin and the white paper even work well together!

Now that I had all my papers I printed out the party info on the white and used a circle hole punch to take a notch out of one of the sides.  

Next I cut the orange paper to fit the exact dimensions of the white paper.

I then centered the napkin design with my invite and cut that to size.  Lots of lining up and cutting!

Now all the pieces were laid out together and ready for the next step.

String ... from the wrapping on a package I received.  I had just enough for all my invites!

I tied the string around the white paper.  I used this glue tape to adhere the tiger print to the white paper.

I used the glue runner on the back of the white and then secured the orange paper.  The back of the orange paper has a really nice print so even the back looks finished.

Here is the final result.  I am really happy with how they turned out.  I always think it is so much more of a challenge when designing anything for boys.  I like things to be fresh looking - more cheerful - and so much of what is out there for boys is so dark and depressing.  The finished size is 2 1/4" by 4 1/2".  I usually like to make my invites as small as possible.  I'm not sure why - I just like them little.  

So, do you like???  Now I just have to clean up the house, think up a couple of fun idea's for the party and decide on food!

I joined the Room to Inspire and Remodelaholic link parties!