I had the honor of designing the invitations for this year’s prom for Potter-Dix High School (of course, my son, Ethan, sort of volunteered me! LOL) When I found out that the theme was a masquerade ball, I was excited about it. I originally was just voicing a few things out there such as getting masks and packaging them inside shallow boxes with a simple but elegant invitation. But, based on the budget, I realized that the shallow boxes were quickly eliminated and I had to come up with another idea. I also started thinking about the masks and how, while we could find some generic ones for little to nothing, I really wanted to do something spectacular. I remembered a friend, Marc Myer, had offered to help with some laser-cutting projects in the past and the idea to custom design a mask blossomed. So I contacted Marc and asked if he’d be interested to help me on the project. I was worried about the budget because it really didn’t have much wiggle room outside covering the costs of materials. But Marc went above and beyond and totally worked with me on it despite the budget limitations. On top of that, it was a very quick turnaround and I can’t possibly express my gratitude to him in getting them all done as fast as he did. I may have come up with the design for the masks but since it was a new experience, there were some ropes I had to learn and Marc was great helping me with it. Also, the laser-cutting was really what made this piece so beautiful and unique.
Since the shallow boxes were way too expensive, I had to try and figure out what else we might be able to come up with to hold the invitations and the laser-cut masks. I looked at envelopes and thought about creating wraparound-labels. But then I remembered that I had a template for a pillow-pack and was able to resize it to suit the size needs I had for the invites and masks. I printed all of the pillow-packs and invites out on some heavy-duty natural cardstock from Stampin’ UP! and hand trimmed, scored, folded and assembled them all myself. My wrists were a bit achy for a few days, but when all of the pieces came together, it was well worth it!
The Junior Class at Potter-Dix High School loved the mask design so much that they enlarged the design and painted it as their backdrop for photos during prom. What an awesome surprise to see that! I was (still am) so very honored by this. It turned out so beautiful and I am very happy that I was able to contribute to such an important high school experience. It really touched my heart!
The only thing that could have (and did) beat that moment was while I was taking a break from tending to filling the punch bowl, my son came and asked me to dance with him. To a slow song. At prom. I’ll never forget that. It was definitely a special moment to me, he’ll never ever know.
