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!