I'm never buying invitations again. Maybe.

My friend Erika is having a baby at the end of November, and while we were planning her shower, I offered to order the invitations. Erika doesn't know if the baby is a boy or a girl, and she and her husband are huge Ohio State fans, so we planned a scarlet and grey theme for the shower.

After I got over my initial I-hate-Ohio-State disgust, I set to work finding invitations. I looked everywhere. I even looked places that are totally not affordable (cough Tiny Prints). And everything was either blue, pink, or some sort of green / yellow.  It didn't seem like we should have a green invitation and then an OSU themed shower, but I didn't know what else to do.

And then a flash of creativity came over me. Well, not really. But the invitation I liked best seemed pretty basic. Surely I could recreate it?

I am NOT an artistic person. I don't often have visions of original creativity. But give me a picture of something that someone else made and darn it, I can copy it with the best them! Shout out to Pinterest for furthering my delusions here.

Here's the inspiration invitation I was working with:

You can find the invite here on Shutterfly.

It's adorable. I might even like it better than scarlet and grey. But I couldn't change the theme this late in the game. So I worked to recreate it.

I made my version in Microsoft Publisher. I made it a little smaller than a size 10 mailing envelope so I wouldn't have to buy new envelopes. And I printed two to a page on cardstock so I didn't have to buy more cardstock.

I think it turned out pretty cute! I download all of my cute fonts from kevinandamanda.com. They have the BEST fonts and they are all free.

So my new plan is just to troll the internet for ideas next time I need an invitation, and to try to create it myself. And if/when that doesn't work, order them from somewhere.

Obviously at least half the fun of pinterest is coming up with ideas you can steal adapt to be your own. Are there any other ways you adapt inspiration to be your own?