As part of the Creative Crew, one of the first projects that I designed for Canvas Corp Brands was a nautical themed wedding invitation and matching RSVP card. The CCB design team is very flexible, allowing me to add my own design elements to the project. As the color scheme and most of the design materials are already created, this type of design can be more challenging than starting from scratch. In fact, as a designer, you will frequently be asked to create a new product design to coordinate with or extend an existing product line.

I not only love to design wedding stationary but also SVG cut files for gift bags, boxes and other containers. So I decided to design an invitation and matching RSVP card and a fancy box to hold them both. I decided to use the Cancas Corp Brands Nautical Collection card stock.

The Existing Paper Collection
The Nautical Collection contains several background patterns, including red and navy stripes, anchors and chevrons. The collection also has some great nautical graphics, including beautiful borders and tags. I added texture to the card design by using some of the CCB fabrics, trims and cords. Finally, I wanted to add my own personality to the wedding invitation by using two Silhouette Cameo SVG print and cut files that I created recently for two other tutorials here at BellaOnline.

So what specs would I need for the project.

SVG Print and Cut
Because wedding stationary is meant to be sent to a lot of guests, the bride would appreciate a way to make this easier. What better choice than an SVG print and cut cut file for the Silhouette Cameo, to which the bride could add her personal wedding text and cut in multiples. This SVG file would also contain the cut lines for the invitation and response cards. Each card is made from several layers of card stock. So the bride would be able to cut multiples of each layer, making more than one card at a time.

Nautical Tags and Stickers
Recently, I wrote a tutorial about using the Sketch effect in Pixelmator^R to make digital stamps. For that tutorial, I designed an SVG print and cut file with several nautical graphics, including sea shells and creatures. The SVG cut file has both tags and stickers. I decided to use the stickers as part of this card design.

Nautical Love Message Tags
For a second tutorial, I created another group of print and cut tags but this time in Photoshop^R and Illustrator^R. In Illustrator, I first created a custom brush and applied the brush to a circular path, which gave us the border for a circular tag. In Photoshop I added the text to each tag, which was a love saying with a nautical theme. Finally, I returned to my nautical tags and stickers SVG file to grab the cut lines for the stickers. I switched the stroke to a fill to create the solid colored nautical shapes for the center of these new tags. The color scheme for these tags came from the bold navy and red colors in the Nautical Collection card stock by CCB.

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Images of finished designs made with Canvas Corp Brands products used by permission.