Minnie Mouse Invitations and Tags

A good friend of mine asked me to make Minnie Mouse Baby Shower Invitations and Tags for her.  EXCITED, I jumped right to it!  What comes to mind when you think of those black and white mice?  Their ears right?!  Me too!  So immediately, I told her I was thinking of making the mouse head as the base of the the invitation and either make the face on the front and the invitation info on the back. HOWEVER, I am NOT that clever, so I just went with the simple route and printed the party info on the front. :)

Super cute right?  YES!  Gotta love Disney for making their mouse so adorable and easy to cre-create.  I probably shouldn't say that publicly, but I already did. :)  Although, I already had in mind what I wanted to do, I still googled "Minnie Mouse"  for some perfect tips and tricks.  Turns out the entire WWW had the same ideas as me!  lol. no surprise, right.  I bet you did too!  Scrolling through the the images you can see which ideas I took. :)

For this project I used "mixed media" aka mixed brands and products.  I have been scrapbook collecting for over 10 years before becoming a CTMH Consultant what'd you expect?  (I try to only use CTMH products, but I did not have scrapbook polka dot cardstock nor a stamp so I used  the polka dot embossing folder for the bow. Besides it gives the card a good oopmh.  You can forgive me or not, but I am really impressed with myself and happy because this project gave me my creative mojo a boost!

I was able to make this project in about 8 hours, including 30 Invitations, 50 tags, and 13 cards (bonus).  I know it sounds like a long time, but I had to complete the project in about 4 days and spent maybe two hours a day, give or take. It would be a dream come true if I could spend everyday scrapbooking and able to attend to a project without distractions.  But, let's get real, we are human, and I'm a woman...multi-tasker is almost every woman's middle name. ha!

Anywho, you have been dying to know what other products I used to make this adorable invitation and how to do it.  :)

Well, I used the CTMH Cricut Art Philosophy Cartridge to make most of this project. 

Before I give you some tips and tricks, this invitation fits in a 6"x6" envelope.  Please note that it is recommended to visit USPS to mail this size of envelope; it will cost more than standard mailing because of the size.  I visited them to verify.

CTMH Cricut Art Philosophy Cartridge
Page 21 Cricut Circle @ 5 inches (Head-Invitation); <Circle1>
Page 21 Cricut Circle @ 2-1/2 inches (Ears-Invitation); <Circle1>
Page 21 Cricut Circle @ 1-1/4 inches (Head-Tag); <Circle1>
Page 21 Cricut Circle @ 3/4 inches (Ears-Tag); <Circle1>
Page 41 Cricut (Shift Butterfly) @ 2-1/2 inches (Bow-Invitation); <Bttrfly1>
Page 41 Cricut (Shift Butterfly) @ 3/4 inches (Bow-Tag); <Bttrfly1>

Yup that's it!

Mixed Media Stuff
I downloaded the "Walter" font to print the party info. The other font I used is "Tahoma."  Have fun with it and see what fits your invite and style. I rendered the invitation info on MS Word, therefore the placement looks a little off.  My brother tried to help me render it on some high tech adobe program, but it wasn't working for me because I had already cut and embossing everything and I was not going to do it all over again.  Something to think about...complete the entire mock-up before starting the project. 

I did not want to play the guessing game and wasting good quality cardstock when cutting the "face, " the part of the invite with party information on it so I whipped out The Cutting System.  I used the small circle and blue cutter (4-1/2 inches).  If you got tips using the Cricut please advise!

To cut the tag's "face" I used a 1 inch circle punch.

Cardstock:
Black
Blush
White

Ribbon: Discontinued "Hollyhock" Ribbon. Cut @ 2-1/4 inches to wrap around to the back and adhere with adhesive. I used glue dots.

You can cut the butterfly's body or fold it back.  I found folding the body back was easier.

After you cut everything and assembled the little things; starting adhering the entire project!  It's really simple :)

To insure that each mouse head are as similar as possible I created one that fit to my liking and used that one as my sample.  For each mouse head I stacked the head on top of the sample then placed on ear and the next.  I'm really bad at using Tombow® Adhesive. 

.........
So........ I used double-sided tape. (yikes!)  Actually, to me; it works well for cards. :)

And as a bonus I made 13 3"x4" thank you cards.  Don't you Love it?!  I do!  I hate wasting even the tiniest scrap of paper.  Turned out that I had extra "thank you's" from the tags so I decided to make thank you cards with them.  Another friend, who is a very creative card maker inspired me to use the embossing tag folder.  Unfortunately I had to cut every frame, but to me it was work it!

CLOSE UP!

Another bonus, the package.  I buy vegan soap from a local company and when she delivers my soap she closes the package with ribbon!  So eco-friendly.  I usually use staples.  I still use staples, but I like the creativity she uses so I decided to borrow a trick from her. 

I know it was a journey to get through this post, but when I get excited, sometime I OVER DO IT!  I hope you enjoyed scrolling through this post and I inspired you to get scrappin'!

Happy scrappin' with paper that is!