Annika's DIY flower monogram birth announcement / thank you cards
Annika is four months old today! And she is so cute and funny and filled with personality, just like her three older siblings. Luckily, she has fit in really well and I can happily say despite those want-to-head-butt-the-wall moments (mornings/dinner time/getting out the door any time), life with four kids is pretty darn great. Being a bit of a DIYer, I decided to make her birth announcements (actually, it's so late and her birth has been announced a million times over and she has pretty much met everyone, so let's go with "thank you" cards, because that is really what they are for).
A while back I spotted a flower monogram on Pinterest - someone had opened up a 3D papier mache letter and filled it with flowers. Great for parties or events and I thought a fake-flower one would look great on her wall. But that didn't happen so I had the idea to make one up, stick it on the wall above her in a floral wrap against my black wall for her birth announcement picture. So I sliced the top off a 3D letter, hot-glu-gunned fresh flowers into it and hung it on a tiny nail on the black wall in my dining room. I lay a sleeping, wrapped Annika on a sheepskin on the sideboard and snapped away until she woke up (which wasn't very long. Just like her siblings, she is a cat-napper!) Then I uploaded them in iPhoto, chose one and then played around with some fonts in Finder (I use a Macbook Pro) and came up with these announcements.
Then it was time to print - my first attempt at Officeworks was a big fat fail as the font I originally used for the info (Mossy) was too thin so it was back to the drawing board. In the end I paired CK Cursive with Pompiere - both freebies - and tried again. Another fail because I had saved it as a PDF and you can't print four PDFs to a page unless you set it up that way which they didn't tell me till I got there, so I went home empty-handed again and re-saved as a jpg. This time I took it to the local printer place where I successfully printed four to an A4 page! It cost me a bit more ($18 for 10 sheets compared to around $10 that Officeworks would have cost me), but honestly, for the time I'd have to waste again and the petrol money, I'd have come out even! I printed on thickish stock - 250 gsm - so it's not photo glossy, but it still came out nicely and I can write on the back easily.
Then I just cut out with a scalpel and ruler and done! I'm pretty happy with the end result - now I just have to finish writing on them all and sending them out!
CK Cursive free font (Annika font)
Pompiere free font (main font)
Black wall paint is Dulux Domino
Ludde sheepskin, Ikea
Vintage Aqua muslin wrap, Toshi
Papier Mache letter, Spotlight
Flowers, picked from my garden, nicked from around the neighbourhood and bought from the supermarket (yes, I am classy like that)
Garden snips, Country Road
Striped pen (my fave thing to write with!), Officeworks