I love planning parties and celebrations but costs can soon add up. One thing you can save money on without scrimping on effect is your party invitations. I am going to tell you how you can make your own party invitations completely free. You will need to have access to a computer and be able to use an editing programme such as Photoshop or Lightroom. If you don't have access to your own, ask a friend to borrow theirs or use a computer in your local library.
Decide on a theme and colour scheme
Any chance to celebrate a milestone with a party is a great excuse to get my creative juices flowing. I like to have a theme to a celebration, like my little boy's recent dinosaur themed birthday party. Once I have a theme and colour scheme in mind it is easy to piece together some invitations. To help you decide on a theme you can put together a mood board of different ideas and colours that go well together and use that for your inspiration when designing your invitations. You could use pictures from magazines, print outs, colour swatches and fabric on your mood board, anything that gives you inspiration.
Pick free images to use
You might decide that you want images on your invitation. I love a personalised invitation, an invitation to a party with a photo of the birthday person on the front is a lovely idea, and this way the invitation also serves as a little keepsake for them. You could also choose to use a free stock image on your invitation if you find one that fits your theme well. Alternatively you could draw your own image and scan it onto your computer to add to a computer design.
Choosing a font for your invitation design
One thing that will really make your invitation stand out is to use a beautiful font. There are probably plenty of fonts to choose from on your computer but if you really want your invitation to stand out and look special I would consider using a downloaded font. There are plenty of freebie fonts on the website Font Bundles (and also plenty of reasonably priced paid for ones if you decide to splash out on one.
As you can see there are some gorgeous fonts here, and there is bound to be one that meets the theme and design of your invitation. My personal favourites are the styles handwriting and script font, especially for invitations, but depending upon what type of event it is you might want to look for something else. For example for a teenage birthday party I would probably go for something striking and bold.
You can look at each font to see how the letters look individually and there are also examples of the font being used in a project which gives you a great idea how the font would look on your invitations.
What do you want your invitations to say?
The last thing to do is piece all these elements together. You could use a free template or go with a layout of your own. Make sure the lettering is nice and clear and that you have all the details on there including the venue, time, date and any dress code. You might also want to put RSVP details including a date to reply to and the address / email / phone number to RSVP to. If it is a wedding invitation you might need to have a couple of different pages, as you will likely have more information to include but invitations to birthday parties can be much simpler.
Make sure you get someone to proof read your invitation once it is ready, in case you have made any typos or spelling mistakes and to check that all the information is correct. You don't want people turning up an hour early for a party!
Send your invitations electronically for free
Once you have finished your invitation design, to keep the process completely free simply use the image as an electronic invite and send it to your recipients via text (be careful of data charges), Whatsapp or email. This is a great way to send your invites because it creates much less paper waste and is really environmentally friendly. If you are sending your invites this way you can usually see if they have been received by the recipient too, and it is easy to follow up with a simple reminder if people haven't RSVP'd by the deadline.
As you can see, it is really easy to make your own party invitations for free. Once you have done it once, there will be no stopping you the next time because it really is so easy to put together your own really stylish invitations without causing harm to the environment or your bank balance!
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