Warning: Creating your own baby shower invitations can be hazardous to your health
I say that half jokingly, but let me share a little story with you to show you what I mean.
After the story, I’ll give you some great tips about creating your own baby shower invitations, which I learnt the hard way from trial and error.
I wanted to pull my hair out…
The first time I planned a baby shower, I was on a tight budget, but I realized how important the invitations were, so I wanted them to be perfect. After all, the invitations create the first impression of the party. And let’s face it, if they’re boring or ugly, the invited guests will subconsciously start off with a bad taste in their mouth.
Admittedly, I’m not a very artistic person, so my first experience trying to create my own baby shower invitations from scratch using free images and card templates I found on the Internet almost caused me to pull my hair out! It took so much time and energy that it almost drove me crazy.
And the printing. Don’t even get me started on that!
I designed a folding card with words on the inside, so I had to run the card through my inkjet printer twice – once for the front of the card and once for the inside. I kept putting them in the wrong way and printing the words upside down! Yeah…I’m spatially challenged 🙂
What a waste of money and paper it was. My printer also struggled with the thickness of the card stock. A couple of times, the paper got stuck and it kept printing over and over on the same line. What a disaster! Let’s just say that my printing adventure caused me to blow my budget.
Anyway, the invitations turned out quite nice, and my girlfriend was pleased, but it was not an experience I care to repeat ever again. I’ve thrown many parties since (my friends call me the “Baby Shower Queen” now) and now I find it easy and stress-free (actually fun!) to create invitations but it took lots of trial and error and research online.
If you want to avoid the same sort of catastrophe and just want to get going, here is a fabulous site that I find to be tremendously helpful. I always get my cards here.
Finestationary.com – I just love this site. It has so many beautiful cards, I often lose myself while I’m there! Lots and lots of fabulous choices. Prices range from inexpensive to expensive. You can get blank cards if you want to create your own design or print the cards by yourself, as well as pre-printed cards.
You can also personalize your card by changing the wording, the type style and ink color. There’s even a neat little feature to help you with the wording on the card. Once you’ve personalized the card, you can preview what it will look like. Very cool!
How to create your own shower invitations
only for the brave of heart
1. The first thing you’ll want to do is decide whether you want a flat card or a folding card.
I highly recommend you choose a flat card because if you’re planning on doing the printing yourself, they are much easier to deal with.
2. The next thing you want to decide what kind of paper to use for the cards. For example, you can use standard photocard paper or cardstock.
I recommend using a medium to heavy weight card stock, about 65-104 Ib. This is important because if the paper is too thin, the card will feel cheap and flimsy, which will create a bad impression (if only subconsciously).
Important! Remember that the thicker the paper, the harder it will be for your printer to handle. Make sure your printer is compatible with the paper before you buy!
One example of blank cards is “Personal Creations Ink Jet Greeting Cards” (by Avery). You should be able to get them at your local office supply or stationery store.
Another alternative is at finestationery.com. Click on “BABY” at the top, then select “Price” in the drop down menu on the right. There you’ll see several choices for a whole set of blank cards with envelopes in pretty colors.
3. Once you’ve bought some cardstock, you’ll want to set up Microsoft Word or whichever word processing software you use to design your card.
Create a template that is the same size as the cardstock. Click on File > Page Setup > Page tab, and then choose the size from the Paper Size drop-down menu.
4. If you want to add a background image or various images, you can get some free clipart directly from MS Word by choosing the Insert menu > Picture > Clip Art One thing about the MS Word clip art is it looks kind of cheesy to be honest.
You can also insert a photograph of the expecting mother on the card. You’ll just need a digital photo of her to do that. Insert menu > Picture > From File …
A site I highly recommend for clipart is istockphoto.com.
If you want to write a message over the picture or image, right-click on the image > Format Picture… > Layout tab > Behind text.
You can then write your message on top of the image.
5. Now it’s time to add text to your card. Try different fonts to see which one suits your card the best. I like the brush scripts the best, but it depends on what looks best for your card.
6. The last step is to print the cards. If you’re printing them yourself, I suggest doing a test run on regular paper first so you don’t waste the special paper for the cards, which can be expensive.
Make sure you’re totally happy with the way everything looks before doing the actual printing.
When you’re happy with everything, print only one card with the thick cardstock to begin with just to make sure you’re printer can handle the paper properly.
If that one goes perfect, then you’re ready to print the entire batch!
An alternative to consider for printing is taking your MS Word file to your local print shop for printing. The quality will be excellent…but it will be costly.
Another possibility is to use an online printing shop like vistaprint.com. All you do is upload your design (you’ll need to convert your MS Word file into Adobe PDF format), and they’ll print your cards for you and send them to you.As you’ve heard a million times before, nothing in life is free. While it’s nice to use your creativity and artistic ability to create the cards yourself, and your girlfriend will surely appreciate your effort, quality blank cards, printer ink and envelopes will actually end up costing about the same as personalized pre-designed cards.
Also, don’t forget your time (and sanity 🙂 ).
Be prepared to spend lots of time designing your own cards if you’re doing it for the first time. From my experience, you’ll get the best and quickest results from an online card company where you can personalize the cards the way you want.