Peyton's 1st "Sailabration" invitations

For Peyton's 1st birthday "Sailabration", I knew I wanted to do message in a bottle invitations.  I saw some really cute ideas on Pinterest about staining paper with coffee & other things to make the paper look weathered.  So many cute ideas, so little time. So instead, I bought scrapbook paper that already looked weathered.  I printed four of the messages to a page & then cut them into 4ths. 

Then I started the burning process.  So I learned a few things here.  The obvious, paper burns fast.  

I put a cup of water beside me & I lost a few invites when they just caught fire too fast.  So I decided to dampen the paper along the edges where I wanted it to burn. You can kinda see in the picture above that the top of the paper is a little damp.  This really helped control the burn.

A few good men down...

 I really liked how these turned out.  I let them sit in my garage for a couple of days to "air out" before I put them in the bottles. I didn't want the smoke smell to be too overpowering. 

I rolled the paper up & tied it with a ribbon.  I had bought these cute little bottles with cork tops at...where else?  Hobby Lobby.  When glass was 50% off. : )

When I tied the ribbon around the message, I left it long so it could come outside of the bottle & it could all be pulled out in one piece. I then tucked the long end of the ribbon behind the bow I tied around the bottleneck.

I loved these invitations.  The hardest part was paying for shipping. I was not pumped about that. But, I hand delivered a lot of them to our local friends, so I only wound up having to mail a handful. A sweet invitation for a sweet baby girl turning 1. Well, who is over 19 months old at the time of this last post, but who is counting. ; )  Happy crafting everyone! XOXO. 

Main Party Page: http://manicmamamiles.blogspot.com/2015/07/peytons-1st-birthday-sail-bration.html
Invitations: http://manicmamamiles.blogspot.com/2016/02/peytons-1st-sailabration-invitations.html
Food: http://manicmamamiles.blogspot.com/2015/10/peytons-sailabration-food.html
Food Decorations: http://manicmamamiles.blogspot.com/2015/11/peytons-1st-sailabration-food.html
Decorations: http://manicmamamiles.blogspot.com/2015/11/peytons-1st-sailabration-decorations.html