Lingerie Shower Invitation Tutorial

Have I told you my sweet sister-in-law is getting married this year? Even more exciting than that, I have the honor of being her matron of honor on that special day! Let me tell you, being the matron of honor is no easy job…there’s the party planning, craft making, hours of Pinterest surfing, miniature food eating, and attending all sorts of parties and showers. Oh who am I kidding? IT’S SO MUCH FUN!!! Especially when I have a precious co-maid of honor to share all the festivities with.

One of my responsibilities was making the lingerie shower invitations. When we finally settled all the details of the party, we found ourselves in a bit of a time crunch. I needed cute invitations in a short amount of time. There are plenty of templates out there that you can purchase and print in a jiffy, but I wanted a personal touch to the ones I sent out. I gathered all the craft materials I had on hand and an idea was born.

I am sharing this quick tutorial with you today in case you ever find yourself in a pinch! It’s super simple and almost doesn't even require a tutorial, but I've included some patterns and templates to help you get started!

Materials Needed:

• Scrapbook patterned paper
• Cardstock in a matching solid color
• Printable paper of your choice
• Ribbon
• Pencil
• Scissors
• Adhesive spray or glue stick

The first thing you need to do is make your two pattern corsets. I have included my own patterns here to save you some time! These fit perfectly inside a 4.75” by 6.5” envelope. If you choose to go bigger or smaller, simply click the link, save the pattern as a jpg, insert the picture in a word document and resize up or down according to your needs. I recommend printing on cardstock for a little more stability when you start tracing.

Front pattern
Back pattern

Trace the small corset on the back of the patterned scrapbook paper. You don’t want any pencil lines on the front! Pay attention to the pattern of your paper. Some patterns may require you to line up your tracing pattern a certain way, like stripes. Otherwise, trace your little heart out!

Repeat the process with the larger corset on the solid cardstock paper.

Once you have all your pieces cut out, attach the smaller corset to the larger one. I used spray adhesive because it’s quick and I knew I wouldn't have to worry about stickability (a crafting word I just made up). A glue stick would do the job just as well, but I would avoid regular Elmer’s because it tends to make thinner paper wrinkle up and dry wavy.

After you've finished gluing, you might have to do a little trimming to be sure the backing does not peek out anywhere other than the top or bottom. Don’t skip this step! It’s quick and it’s worth it to get a perfect finish.

All that’s left to do for your corsets is to tie the ribbon around the waist. I cut my ribbon pieces to 13” and tied bows. You could always buy the little scrapbook bows that stick on or use jewels instead. Make it your own with whatever you have on hand! You can even use stickers to put the lingerie sizes on the corset for an extra cute touch.

Once those are finished, set them aside and focus on the invitation part. If you’re like me and you don’t have Photoshop, an awesome resource you need to become familiar with is PicMonkey. It has some pretty great design and editing possibilities and it is completely free! You can pay a small monthly fee to use some of the upgrades, but you can get plenty of stuff using the free version.

I had patterned paper to print the invites on which saved me from having to do too much designing. I made a top and bottom border, added the wording and voila! The borders come in very useful when you get ready to cut them out. Here is a blank template of the invitation I made for your use. Click, save it as a jpeg, and insert into a word document. Add a few text boxes with your party information and print them out. You can fit two side by side on an 8.5” by 11” paper that is portrait oriented. You may have to adjust your margins a bit to fit it in.

Some information has been removed to keep the world wide web from joining our party

Print and trim the invitations using the borders as your guide, and then stuff them in envelopes with your corset on top and you’re all done!

You can do a million things to make these more detailed or more personal, so just have fun with it. Mine are moving through the mail as I type and I can't wait for them to reach the girls who will be gathering to celebrate Caitlin!

Good Things

I mentioned in my last blog that I would be posting my progress as I work through the 2015 Goal Setting Series from Lara Casey's blog. I think there is something to be said for taking slow, purposeful steps in establishing goals and planning for the year ahead. In this case, the first step is to take a look back and remember the good things from 2014.

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As I think back, I am overwhelmed with the amount of change we experienced last year. This time last year Coltin and I were getting ready to celebrate our first year of marriage together. He was a part time Associate Worship Pastor and a full time teller at the local bank. I was assisting the Youth and Education Pastor and baking some on the side. We had made a home out of a small loft apartment, and we were completely unaware of how God was already beginning to move us in a new direction.

In February we celebrated a whole year of marriage together! We took a weekend trip to Austin where we relaxed, did indoor skydiving, ate out of food trucks, and strolled the streets with the locals.

In March I got to travel with our youth group back to Belize over Spring Break on mission. We teamed up with a group from North Carolina and spent the week hosting a VBS for local school children. We ended the week with a day on the island snorkeling, feasting, and debriefing with our teammates.

It was while I was out of the country that Coltin received a phone call that changed everything. Through nothing short of a miracle of God, we began talking to a church in Oklahoma about a Worship Pastor position they were hiring for. If I were to try to explain the path of events that had fallen into place to make this happen, you would never believe me! Long story short, in April we went in view of a call to Trinity Baptist Church in Ada, Oklahoma, and our hearts found their new home.

The beginning of one thing is inevitably the end of another, and we left our church in Justin with heavy hearts. It was the church where we met, where we first served together in ministry, where we had made many friends, and a place where we were loved more than we could ever deserve. We were taught about ministry and relationships, we were discipled, and we began our marriage with the advice and example of many spiritual parents. FBC Justin will forever hold a special place in our hearts.

On May 19 we drove to Ada with two mattresses strapped to our cars and my mom in tow. In God's faithfulness to provide, he also provided us a home through a church member. We snatched it up with a gleam in our eyes and hopes that were vested in one too many episodes of HGTV renovations.

When we hit the ground, we hit it running and never looked back! We spent 2 solid weeks of 12-16 hour days transforming the surface of the house. One day I'll dedicate a blog to the renovation in detail, but for now here are a few pictures of the transformation.

The summer was full of activities at the church and we spent every moment we could meeting and getting to know our new church family.  We even had the opportunity to spend two weeks at Falls Creek youth camp.

We decided the move to Oklahoma was a perfect chance to chase after a dream of mine, so I opened Scribbles Bakery out of our home. It was the answer to all my creative desires and it didn't hurt my sweet tooth either. 

After 5 or 6 months, the bakery was going strong, but I wasn't. I was up before dawn many days and crawling in bed around midnight and it wasn't working. It also wasn't providing the income we were hoping for, and I reluctantly shut the doors in November.  

Since then, I've begun working at East Central and it's a new experience altogether. Some days it's exciting and some days it's not. Some days it's very stressful and some days it's very rewarding. I don't know much, but I know God is using it to shape me and to make me more like him. I pray and try to remember that that's enough.

October and November were full of big family events. Coltin's sister got engaged, my brother and sister-in-law announced they are pregnant, and Coltin was ordained into the ministry!

You may relate to this, but for me 2014 ended in a holiday blur. It's my favorite time of year, and yet it always seems to fly by the fastest. It was full of warmth, laughter, and delicious smells. We spent much needed time with family and friends and it fills my heart up just to remember.

It is good to remember. I will never forget the day when I was sipping coffee with one of my dearest friends who was discipling me at the time. She brought up how often God commanded the people of Israel to remember, celebrate, write down. Remembering does us good because it helps us to see how beautifully God is working in our lives. It gives fresh perspective to things. It invites us to praise Him.

Overall, 2014 was a year of great change. It brought ups and downs as any year does, but it was full of good things. We have had community in our lives that we've never experienced before. I'm jumping ahead, but I already know one of my goals for 2015 is to invest in deep relationships. 

Friend, I hope you will take a moment to look back on 2014. It's often easy to pick out and remember the bad things that happened, the dreams that went unfulfilled, or the prayers that went unanswered. Just this once, remember only the good. Reflect on how much there was; I bet you'll be surprised!

New Beginnings

Welcome to the new and improved Going Wester blog! My wonderful friend Victoria of Happily Ever Strader did an amazing job giving it a fresh face and breathing new life into it with a gorgeous design.

After several months of hiatus, I am back to writing and I'm excited to be sharing our lives with you again. I don't know what your January has looked like, but mine has been a little short of goal-crushingly awesome! Instead of waking up on January 1 with a new determination to conquer the world, I feel like I woke up in a fog that I can't shake. Case in point, I realized today that the new body wash I've been using for a week straight is actually body lotion. Wow! That may be a little too much information, but I need you to understand the struggle.

The glorious news is that it's not too late to make this year the best one yet. We have plenty of time to catch up on all that has happened, but for now I want to pick up where we are and plow forward.

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Have you ever asked God a question and gotten an answer that didn't seem to make sense? Since our move to Oklahoma, I've struggled with trying to find my place and my purpose here. I've asked and asked God to reveal where I fit, and each time I've asked, I've gotten an instant answer, "Write." 

That doesn't fully make sense to me yet, because it's not a place and it's not a job and it wasn't the answer that I was looking for. But, I rarely experience such an immediate and clear answer to prayer, so I am running with it! I have new goals for this little blog and lots of ideas. Keep me accountable, friend!

I posted a picture above from Lara Casey's blog. I hope it is the most freeing sentence you read today. There is nothing magical about January 1. Thank goodness!!! If you're like me and you're a little behind, you're in good company! I am currently going through a series of Goal Setting exercises that Lara does every year in January. I hope you'll join me! You can check them out on her blog, or follow along here because I'll be posting my progress and sharing my goals with you as we go.

laracasey.com

If I only wish one thing for each of us this year, it's that we all take a leap of faith and start living the life that God has planned for us. It's wildly more amazing and thrilling than any we could dream up on our own!