Eliza and I wanted to invite a few of our friends over and I thought it’d be a good opportunity to create an invitation since it is something I’ve been waiting to do for a while. Being that I’m not all that creative or talented I decided to do something simple.

Here are some photos to show the process of creating our invitations in a bottle.

Simple custom DHARMA logo made in Illustrator.

Used watercolor paints and coffee for dirt and blood effects.

Dried the paper a few times between paintings.

Cutout art paper for name tags.

Same dirt/blood treatment for name tags. Spatter!

Crinkle the paper, a few times, to make it seem aged.

The finished invitation.

I used Dollar Store bought bottles, wrapped up the invitations like a scroll, and tied a short piece of twine around them to keep them from unraveling and threw them inside. The corks were from our cork collection, so they were easy to find.

All materials used: Art paper, water, watercolor paints, coffee, a lighter, hot glue gun, twine, bottles, corks, my printer, printer paper, Adobe Illustrator, some scissors and a pencil.

I’m pretty happy with how they came out and I already know what I want to do for next year (something completely different). Have you ever done your own custom invitations? Care to share them?