Pirate Card Ahoy!

I don't know about other places, but pirates are big, really big, here in Portland, Oregon. We are the proud home of Captain Bogg and Salty, possibly the best pirate band ever.

We host the annual Portland Pirate Festival, which gave me complete sticker shock the first time we went and purchased tickets ($18 for each adult, at the time), but afterward, we decided that it was well worth it (so many items are free once you enter -- the kids can bounce through numerous inflatable kids bouncy slides, houses and obstacle courses at the Scupper Monkey Island (aka kid's corner), we got to see numerous shows (not least of whom, Captain Bogg and Salty, but also including a wonderful pirate parrot show, puppets shows and the like), we witnessed a sailing ship firing cannons upon pirates on the shore, watched numerous sword fights and played loads of fun kids games hosted by very authentically-dressed buccaneers.

Every time that we've attended, the boys were given some very cool pieces of eight (they seemed to be real metal, not pieces of cheap plastic) by a kindly old sea dog. They've also been given balloon animals, plastic pirate hats and other assorted booty, just for being there.

There seem to be numerous pirate-themed retails shops popping up here and there in the malls. You know when a trend hits the mall, it's definitely mainstream. One might argue that the trend has definitely jumped the shark at this point, but the pirates elsewhere are simply too darned cool for that.

Above are various pix of a pirate birthday party invitation that I have in process. I'm not nearly done yet, I'm just past the stage when I've made sure that all the moving parts work as expected.

The front of the card still needs a little....something, I don't know what (maybe some text announcing that there's a pirate party in the offing). And the back is just crying out for something more, like a sign for the text to hang on, or a pirate ship in the background or something.

But I'm happy with it so far.

I'm taking a few days off of work next week to post this and my generic polka dot party card that I've been working on for ages. Can't wait!

Oh, I got an inquiry this morning about the Circus Party invitations. The woman asked if they could be revised to a carnival theme, which of course is pretty simple. She asked for a quote. The invitations are $40 for the first 10 and $3 each for each additional one. She needs 25 all together. I hope that she doesn't find the total ($85) to be too shocking, but these invitations do require quite a bit of handiwork for each one....