Birthday invitation

One Year Loved

The smocked dress is worn for ninety minutes and photographed in the first ten.

Part of the TinselLux™ collection: invitations in stitched leather, tufted velvet, linen and satin.

The material is the card: linen with a visible weave, velvet with a nap, leather with its grain. It costs the same as every other invitation.

See the collection

This birthday invitation is for a first birthday held at home in the middle of the afternoon, when the good cups come down off the shelf and the cake waits on the sideboard until three. Guests arrive in ones and twos. The grandmothers get the armchairs. Someone takes the dress off its hanger at the last possible moment, because it has been pressed since the night before and everybody knows what a morning can do to ivory cotton.

The turn comes when the high chair is pulled to the middle of the room and one candle goes into the cake. There is a towel under the tray and a camera on every side of it. She looks at the frosting for a long moment before she commits. Afterwards the tea gets topped up, the dress comes off, and the adults stay another hour talking about the year they have just finished.

What goes on it

Every line replaceable

The wording on this card

Please join us to celebrate
EMMA'S FIRST BIRTHDAY
Saturday, April 24, 2027 · 2 PM
THE LAWSON HOME · 63 Rutledge Avenue, Charleston, SC
Tea and cake at three.

Every line of the wording is an example, and yours to replace. The title is painted into the artwork. Type your own and it is drawn again with your words.

What to actually tell people

Set the time around the nap A mid-afternoon start gives you a child who has slept and a party that ends before the evening falls apart. Put the cake at the start of the second hour, not the end.
Press the dress the night before Smocking holds a crease and fine cotton marks easily. Hang it ready, and put the baby in it fifteen minutes before guests arrive, not fifteen minutes before you leave the house.
Make the tea a real service Most of the room is adults who came for the baby and will stay for the pot. Cups, saucers, a jug of milk and a second kettle going is the whole difference between a visit and a party.
Plan for the frosting A towel under the high chair, a flannel within reach and a second outfit folded on the bed. The ivory one is for the photographs and only the photographs.

Start from this one

The artwork
Keep this one, or describe your own party and get artwork drawn for it.
The wording
Every line on this card is an example, the painted title included. Change all of it; the design holds.
Sending
By text, from your own number. Guests open a link. Nothing to download.
The price
One credit for the invitation. Six guests or sixty, the number does not move.