The Apron Strings

I'm doing a wedding shower for a friend of mine, so I went to a fun paper store to see about invitations. Of course, I wanted something sweet and I had a sort of idea as to what type of shower I wanted to throw, but I was hoping to find something in my price range that I liked. I found these cuties, but at $35 bucks for a box (holy gravy bowl!), I decided that I needed an alternate solution. I came up with this:

It's going to be a "kitchen and recipe pounding." The guests will bring a recipe and a pound of something for their pantry, like sugar or flour or whatever. (I thought this would be cool, because I recall my very first married grocery bill and how high it was because of buying all of those "first" staples!) I'm really excited about how the invites turned out. I wanted something cute and a bit retro looking, because the shower is going to be vintage kitchen themed.

Anyway, let me brag some more on these awesome invitations. I did the print inserts and recipe cards on scrapblog - love it. Then I made a paper apron and stitched a pocket on. (I put a slit in the back, behind the pocket, so the invitation insert wouldn't stick out so much and also the pocket wouldn't have to be super deep...) I cut out some cute paper whisks and punched some holes for the apron strings and that was that. Easy peasy and way cuter than the expensive ones, I think.

Here are more pictures for your enjoyment. Don't you wish I would throw YOU a shower?!?