Wednesday, May 13, 2015

Creating Free Digital or Printable Invitations



One of my dearest friends is pregnant with her first little one, and it's a girl!  Living in a house full of boys, I get extra excited at any opportunity to get crafty with my favorite color, PINK!  Her mother-in-law and I are throwing a fun co-ed shower for the happy couple and we decided on a pink and gold Twinkle Twinkle Little Star theme.  I immediately took to Pinterest and have been pinning like crazy.  When it came time for the invites, the parents-to-be decided they wanted an email invitation.  I went to Evite and Paperless Post and while they had some great design choices, they didn't have exactly what I was looking for.  I don't know about you, but once I get an idea in my head, I get stuck on it and nothing else will do.  So, to PicMonkey I went.  If you have never used PicMonkey, get on it.  I absolutely love this site.  It's a great tool for bloggers looking to spice up their blog pics, but it is also perfect for designing your own invitations.  Did I mention that it's FREE!  They do have a Royale membership that has a few extra features, fonts, and overlays, but I've always managed to get by with the free version.

To make this invite I went to PicMonkey and clicked on the Design option.

https://dl-web.dropbox.com/get/Screenshots/Screenshot%202015-05-12%2014.50.57.png?_subject_uid=298343749&w=AACD1hQN-JpPFNvE-3iYuoAF1CRUd2VgceB9JD7OJ1ODJQ

That will bring you to a page that looks like this:

 https://dl-web.dropbox.com/get/Screenshots/Screenshot%202015-05-12%2014.51.16.png?_subject_uid=298343749&w=AAAuktUyLdhOw6nxN2ChurzqSbRXhCKm6w_ekNfU1p4Jmw

On the left you will see the basic edits available to you.  First you want to pick the color of your card, if you are going with a white card, skip this step.  I wanted pink so under Canvas Color I played around until I got exactly the shade of pink that I wanted.  Once you are happy with the color, click apply.

Next you want to add in your decorations, I decided to keep it simple with just a few gold stars in the top right corner.  From the little menu on the left, click on the butterfly.  This will give you a bunch of little shapes you can use as decorations.

https://dl-web.dropbox.com/get/Screenshots/Screenshot%202015-05-12%2015.00.34.png?_subject_uid=298343749&w=AABgNpzUpL9Z1TRIh6P0OWzopG9cofohuy8xfAsPPL6ONw

I clicked on the Stars because, um, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.  Stay with me people.  Of course you can use whatever you want.  Keep in mind that anything with the little crown icon is a Royale feature so you will have to pony up to use those.  I picked a nice basic star and then played around with the color until I got a shade of gold that I was happy with.  Then I copied the heart and resized it to get a few different sizes and rotated some of them to create visual interest.

https://dl-web.dropbox.com/get/Screenshots/Screenshot%202015-05-12%2015.08.38.png?_subject_uid=298343749&w=AACudYosiJDRKOD6g2CTFRr_TgvE_YPhvIKyEv-sIyqquQ

Finally I clicked on the Tt from the menu on the left and inserted text boxes for all of the text I wanted to enter.  I used the same shade of gold as the stars.  One cool thing to keep in mind with text is that in addition to their fonts (non-Royale options are somewhat limited), you can use any fonts that you have on your own computer, yay!  Once you have it how you want it, click save, name it, and save it to your computer.  I was super excited with how this turned out!


In case you are thinking to yourself, "Wow Lauren, this looks great except for those random black boxes," I just added those on top for this post to protect their privacy.  Once you have the invitation saved to your computer you have a couple of options.  You can have them printed (or print them yourself if you have a good printer) and mail them out.  The parents-to-be wanted their invitations emailed out so I had to find an online invitation service that would let me upload my own design.  After a little bit of searching, I found a site called Celebrations that will allow you to upload your own design.  It's a free service, unless you want it ad free in which case you have to pay to upgrade.  This means that with a little bit of creativity and some time at your computer, you can design, send out, and manage RSVPs for your own custom invitations for FREE! 

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