Tea Party/Bridal Shower Tea Bag Invitation – Alice In Wonderland

Earlier this year my sister-in-law asked me to make invitations for her upcoming bridal shower. I made the invitations for my wedding and I was beginning my dive into surface pattern design at the time, so it was perfect timing for this challenge. She told me I had free creative reign over the invitations, but I still poked for some criteria to follow. What she came up with was that the bridal shower would be tea party themed… Alice in Wonderland (AIW) tea party, and the colors were red and black.

If you’ve Googled it before then you know that Etsy, and Pinterest and every other creative platform is riddled with AIW themed invitations and graphics and playing cards and more. However, it was all too bold, or for a baby shower, or stereotypical. NO! I was envisioning elegant, mature, and unique. I know that those are not the typical words used to describe AIW, but I was determined. I dream big!

I did about a month of research and brainstorming then set out to make it happen. After trial and error and many, many trips to every craft store in town, my vision came to life.

Below I share the files I created with you for FREE and all you must do is print and assemble them and then of course share this post with everyone you know!

Alice In Wonderland Tea Bag Bridal Shower Invitation

Level of Difficulty: Moderate to Difficult

MATERIALS:

• –          Cardstock
• –          4”x6” unlined index cards
• –          Twine (or similar material)
• –          Printable Vellum paper
• –          Loose leaf tea – flavor of choice
• –          Charms
• –          Printer
• –          Stapler
• –          Paperclips
• –          Word Editing Software (Microsoft Word is best)
• –          (Optional) software such as Adobe Illustrator or GIMP
•  
•  

DOWNLOADS:

• –          Drink Me
• –          Tea Info Card (back side of Drink Me)
• –          Recipe Card
• –          (Optional) AIW Playing Cards
• –          Instructions for Recipe Cards for Bride
• –          Invitation
• –          Envelope
• –          (Optional) Tomatoes font free from Dafont.com

INSTRUCTIONS:

DRINK ME/TEA TAG: I started by printing a “drink me” tag and a tea info tag, one on either side of a single piece of cardstock. To do so, print one document, then place the cardstock back into the printer, printed side up (adjust if your print feeds differently) and print the second document. REMEMBER TO PERSONALIZE THE “TEA INFO TAG” WITH INFORMATION ABOUT YOUR TEA IF YOU BOUGHT A DIFFERENT TYPE THAN I DID. I recommend cutting loosely around the shape and then cleaning up the edges in case they don’t perfectly line up. As you can see, mine was off a bit but I chose to not reprint them. Cut all those puppies out and then put some band-aids on your scissor blisters.

Take this opportunity to cut 6” long pieces of twine, tie a knot in one end, and staple it to the tag you just created.

PLAYING CARD/RECIPE CARD: I created the recipe side of these cards. However, I purchased the digital file of the playing cards here. This is the one file I cannot supply you with because they are not mine to give but I encourage you to purchase them for yourself. If you do, open the files into software such as Adobe Illustrator or GIMP, ungroup the individual cards and resize them to 4”x6”. You will have to tweak your printing process to make the recipe graphic and the playing card graphic align perfectly on both sides of the card. Instead of cardstock this time, I printed them on 4”x6” unlined notecards from Staples, and then just rounded the corners as they came out of the printer. It was a time-saver and looked professional with the straight edges.

                If you don’t want to purchase these playing cards, or if resizing them seems too difficult then I think the recipe card alone is just fine!

     Print the instructions, cut them into squares, and paperclip them to the recipe cards. Fair warning: you still won’t get all of the recipe cards back (so much for a full deck of 52)! But, this instruction card helps with that.

Halfway there!

INVITATION TEABAG: REMEMBER TO PERSONALIZE YOUR INVITATION TO FIT THE BRIDAL SHOWER OR EVENT YOU ARE HOSTING. The actual invitation is printed on 8.5”x11” vellum and then folded into a “teabag.” NOTE: make sure to fold it to appropriate size to fit into your envelope. In my case, the envelopes were 5”x7” so I folded the vellum to 4.75” x 6.75”. The easiest way to do that was to use the grid on my cutting mat as a folding surface. I purchased this vellum paper at Hobby Lobby. I used double-sided tape to close the overlapping ends. Then folded it over and used one staple to close the bottom end. I tapered the top two corners and folded down the top to create the tea bag look. 

Almost Done! Now to fill the tea bag with tea! I poured about a couple big spoonfuls of Tiesta Blueberry Wild Child loose leaf tea into each bag. This stuff smells amazing! I folded the top back over. I slipped a key charm onto the twine and stapled it onto both sides of the top of the teabag, and then pulled the twine tight to the staple. I chose small, vintage-y key charms from Hobby Lobby, but a variety of other charms would also work. Again, I was going for a subtle AIW look. 

Lastly, print the names and addresses on the back of the envelopes (mine were silver and 5”x7” from Staples). REMEMBER TO PERSONALIZE THE ENVELOPE DOWNLOAD BEFORE PRINTING. Hand-writing the names and address would work just fine too. Finally, slide a recipe card and a giant teabag into each envelope and DONE!

I got so many compliments on these. I’d love to hear about your experience making them below! P.S. I don’t make a commission off any of the products I mentioned above.

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