Check out our new site design!

I'm really excited about our new blog and website make over from Mod Melon Creative! I love the bright colors and Keely was fantastic to work with. We are going to have some great new products over the coming months, so check in frequently to see what we have going on.

Recycled Paper Greeting Cards and More!

I am so excited to announce that Smiles Across Miles Cards has added some terrific new options for our products. In addition to having your cards printed on photo paper, we are now offering printing on card stock as well. Card stock is now available in flat or folded greeting cards in 4x5.5 and 5x7 sizes. Card stock options include standard (semi-gloss), recycled and pearl paper. We are now also offering printing on metallic photo paper. To learn more check out our paper options page.

Carnival Birthday Party

I recently put together a carnival birthday party for my daughter. I found a ton of great ideas on different blogs and thought I would share some photos from our party, as well as links to where you can find other ideas. I started out by sending a photo invitation to guests similar to the Carnival Party Invitation on our website (below):



I decorated the house with a lot of streamers and balloons, as well as with printable banners that I found on the Dimple Prints Etsy store for $10. It also included a file for party hats, which I decorated with curled ribbons.






We cleared out three different rooms, and had a couple of games in each room. Games included bean bag toss, fishing, basketball, and the duck pond (finding two ducks with matching colors on the bottom). In addition to the games we had a photo booth, and face painting. My mom was the face painter, and used one of the Klutz books, which had really easy to follow directions for how to make their examples. I made a photo booth from a big piece of card board with material wrapped around it and a chair in front for the kids to sit on. We also had our indoor bounce house set up for the kids, which was a huge hit.



As the kids arrived they were each given a bag with tickets inside. They used the tickets to play each game, and put the prizes they won in their bags. Prizes we had included goldfish soap (everyone loved this), bubbles, pinwheels, small stuffed animals, and animal masks.



For snacks we had things like popcorn, animal crackers and fruit. The kids had chicken nuggets and pizza for lunch. I made cupcakes instead of cake because I think that cupcakes are easier for little kids to eat at parties. I decorated them with clown cupcake picks that I found on Ebay. I arranged them on a cupcake tower, and also used a few cupcake toppers and cupcake papers that were a part of my printable supplies from Dimple Prints.



When the kids left they received carnival treat boxes that I got from Oriental Trading Company, with cotton candy ($1 at Walmart), circus peanuts, a clown nose, and a maze game. If you are doing a party for older kids, The Dollar Store had a lot of carnival themed favors, which were too hard to do for four year olds. I also purchased the carnival photo frames from Oriental Trading Company, and I put the photo booth pictures of each child in the frame and gave them with the thank you notes. I put a small piece of magnet strip on the back of each so they can hang them on the fridge if they want.

Overall, I think that the kids had a lot of fun. I think that this kind of party would be great in the summer when you can have it all outside, but we did our best inside on a snowy winter day. Here are the links to some of the blogs that I got carnival party ideas from (some were adapted from circus parties):

Kara's Party Ideas
Thoughtfully Simple
Armelle Blog

If you ever have any cool party ideas, or photo from your parties you would like to share, I would love to post them here.

Custom Butterfly First Birthday Invitation

Throughout the website we talk about how we are happy to customize any of our designs in any way that you can imagine. I wanted to take a minute to show you an example of a first birthday invitation that I recently customized for an adorable little girl. Here is the original first birthday butterfly invitation from the website:



I changed the colors and butterflies on the card so that they looked similar to those on the little girl's jumper. Here is the customized birthday invitation:



I love the way that it turned out! If you have any ideas for how you would like to customize any of our designs, please feel free to contact us.

Custom work with Teen Identity

I love having the chance to work on custom projects. I recently was lucky enough to help develop a postcard for Teen Identity Portraits & Magazine. Tasra Dawson, the photographer behind Teen Identity, does fantastic work and is sending a great message to teen girls. You can check out the finished product above.

New Birthday Invitations

We have been hard at work on new birthday invitations this weekend and wanted to give you a sneak peek. Here are a couple of the invitations just added to Smiles Across Miles Cards:

To check out the other new invitations and see all of our birthday invitations, head on over to Smiles Across Miles Cards!

Super Hero Birthday Invitations

Over the next few weeks we will be adding a ton of new cards to the website. Tonight we added a couple of new Superhero birthday invitations that we think are really fun. Take a look:

Our website and blog just got a whole new look, thanks to boutiquemama.com. Thanks Robin!