It has been forever since I have blogged. I’ll just blame it on the baby who isn’t even here yet – 8 weeks to go! But, that doesn’t mean I haven’t been crafting when time has allowed. I’m back today to share with you an invitation I designed recently for a special Shabbat dinner to help celebrate the 10th Anniversary of Temple Beth Am‘s religious school rabbi.

The first thing we did was focus on the colors. A little playing around with paper at Paper Source and we settled on Peacock Cardstock for the base, Pool Text Weight for the top layer and Beet A9 Envelopes, a lovely jewel-toned combo. From there I contemplated a design that would incorporate some Jewish element. Looking at my stamp collection, I settled on a filigree Star of David (sorry, no link it came from a no longer available set of Jewish stamps) that I decided to emboss in Zing Metallic Purple which matched the Beet PS color just beautifully (the photos don’t quite do it justice). In order to save myself a little embossing and easier adhesion of the top layer, I created a template of scrap paper, slightly smaller than the final printed layer, and attached it with removable adhesive to allow for just stamping the trim in a pattern that looked good. Of course, to save myself from any errant embossing powder, I wiped the base down with my Embossing Magic before I started stamping.

For the printed layer, I used Microsoft Publisher to design it using Antrokas for the beautiful script and Champagne & Limousines for the rest. I love how it turned out and have received many compliments on it!

Of course it wouldn’t have been complete without a little hand-stamped Mamaleh logo on the back thanks to my custom Impress stamp as well as my husband constantly encouraging me to brand my work!

And when it came time for Shabbat dinner itself, I revisited the colors and overall design with very simple layered place cards that gave a nod back to the feel of the invite and were a big hit and looked lovely on the similarly colored linens.

That’s all for today!  I’ll be back soon with another invitation – this one for a certain almost 6 year old’s birthday party!