Invitations.

I wrote all about these invitations in another post which I'll post tomorrow, but because it's so lengthy and because I'm so excited about them, I thought they deserve their own post.

These invitations are spectacular, as you'll see in a minute. My mother is going to FLIP (not in a good way) when she sees these. Hopefully she won't check my blog :)

As ya'll know, I'm big into my annual Halloween party. There's always a ton of projects that I take on, a ton of decorations, and always gross food (never any normal looking food). This year, because money is so tight, I'm going for the simple but big effect: huge creepy cloth across every ceiling, long, beat up and dirty drapes on every window, and hopefully drapes in every doorway. We're inviting the usual amount, which actually equates to 16 invitations total, not including any extra that I want to make for myself!

I'm telling and showing you all of this because none of my RL friends read my blog. If anyone that reads this were coming, I wouldn't post anything until after the party or after everyone received them.

Here are several pictures of my invitations and here's where my mother is going to freak out:

Ouija boards! Our address and telephone are on the bottom which I covered up. Now, I'm not one to normally like things like this. I strongly believe in God, but for a Halloween party I go all out. I go scary, I go creepy, I go gross. When more money allows, I will go terrifying. As far as these invitations go, I hope they will make people uncomfortable! Ha! I love them and they turned out exactly the way I imagined in my head! 

The graphic was Erin's job... she did all of this herself. I found the font for her and she did the rest. How AMAZING is she!? 

This was not an original idea. I got the idea from Pinterest, and you can see many different versions here.  But they all look lame IMHO. Maybe not lame, but in comparison to Erin's skills, they look totally subpar if you ask me.

I didn't just want a white piece of paper as the invitation, I wanted an actual board game. I found a FABULOUS tutorial here: How To Make a Retail-Worthy Quarter-Fold Board Game on BoardGameGeek.com.  I used chipboard and black contact paper, then rubber cement to glue the graphic to the chipboard. 

Part of Step One of the making process

The back side and front side

I wanted a Planchette to go along with the Ouija board to give the full effect. It just didn't seem complete to just throw a mini board game in an envelope without the entire game. It's like using a Monopoly board without Monopoly money. Just weird!

So I looked and looked and couldn't find any place that even sold Ouija boards for a fair price, let alone the planchettes alone. Eventually I found a guy on Etsy who makes them and would custom-make mini sized ones to the size of my board!

Planchettes!

They totally rock my socks off and DO fit perfectly with the board.

The Etsy guy was amazing. He responded immediately to my initial request and all contact I made thereafter. You can see he makes some really cool and beautiful stuff. I ordered the pieces on a Friday night, and he had them finished and in the mail on the following Monday. He made a few extra in case some of them didn't turn out, so he gave me the extras... FOUR extras! AND, on top of all of THAT, he threw in a completely cool gift:

A full size Ouija board and full sized planchette! I seriously thought he made a mistake by putting it in the same box as mine, but it turns out:

When he said "being a good sport about paying",
he's talking about how I wanted to pay half now, and then pay half once the order was received.
But there's isn't an option of doing that with Etsy, so I just paid him all up front. 

How. Awesome. Is. That?? Just, so awesome, that's how awesome. I don't think I'll ever use it, but it'll be a great display with my apothecary!

If I EVER need any wood pieces anywhere similar to this, I'm going to him. If anyone else asks me about where to get something like this, I'm sending them straight to him.

See how they all came together once I added either regular cheesecloth (left), spider web (right), or aged cheesecloth (center)? They held the planchettes in place really nice. 

Regular Cheesecloth (Erin's Idea)

Fake Spider Webs (Adam's idea)

Tea-Stained Cheesecloth (my rendition)

But I couldn't stop there. No. I couldn't just put these sick invitations into a yellow bubble envelope and send them on their way. I had to make them truly awesome from board to stamp.

I spent most of the day yesterday making worthy mailing labels. That's right, I couldn't just write on the package. I couldn't just type up names and addresses on a label. They had to be AWESOME labels. Some I am going to hand deliver, so I didn't need an address.

I hand cut every one of them because none of them were exactly the same size as the labels themselves. I'm very pleased with how they turned out. Definitely worth the time if you ask me. 

But again, I couldn't just put them in a yellow Scotch bubble envelope. So I covered the envelopes in butcher paper and tied them with string. 

I found that spray adhesive worked the best to get the paper attached to the envelope. 

After that dried, I used Elmer's Glue to adhere the outside flaps like wrapping a present. I put some painter's tape on the flaps while they dried. 

And... the final result! 

**NOTE: You cannot send a package wrapped in twine in the mail. I only mailed three of the invitations, the rest I had delivered or had Adam hand deliver.

Final thoughts:

I thought that this would be a fairly easy and simple project. I thought Erin's part would take about two days, then it would take only an evening (about 4 hours) to complete my part. HA! I spent four evenings plus my lunches on these babies, plus whatever time I may or may not have spent during work hours...   >.>

If I had to do it over, the only thing that I think I might change is making it a folding board, kind of like this:

I think it looks more fancy. But that's also a lot more work.

Now for my other Halloween projects... *sigh*