DIY Fall Themed Birthday Party Invitations

When fall rolls around, you start to feel the air turning crisp and the trees changing into beautiful colors. You see kids raking the leaves and having fun jumping in the pile along with their laughter and giggles. What a perfect time to celebrate your birthday with a fall themed birthday party with invitations that fit the season perfectly.

Making your own fall themed birthday invitations can be a lot of fun. A fun and unique birthday invitation is a photo birthday invitation. Look for any photos you have at home that would fit the fall theme. If you don't have one, you can visit Wikimedia Commons. They have many photos that are free of charge and you can use them to create a beautiful fall birthday party invitation. You can check them out at the following link: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page.

What you will need:

• Photo uploaded onto your computer
• Computer
• Color Printer
• Photo Editing Program or Picasa 3 http://picasa.google.com/
• Colored Stock Paper to match your photograph (any scrapbooking store)
• Photo Paper (find at any office supply store or where printers are sold)
• A7 Envelopes 5 ¼ x 7 ¼ (find at any scrapbooking store)
• Scotch Double Sided Permanent Tape http://www.michaels.com/art/online/displayProductPage?productNum=gc0258
• Scissors

You will now need some type of photo editing software and any will do as long as they have the capability to add type directly on your photograph. If you have XP or Vista for Windows, a great free program that you can use to create your fall themed birthday party invitation is Picasa 3 from Google at http://picasa.google.com/. Go to the site and download Picasa 3, the free photo editing software from Google. Not only can you edit your photos and do many things with them, you can create albums and share them with your family friends. There are many possibilities that you can do with this program.

Once you have your photograph picked out, open up your photo in Picasa 3 and once it has opened, left click on the text button on the left upper side. At this time, you can type anywhere on your photograph. On the left side there are many other options to choose from, such as choosing a font style, a font size, changing your text to bold or italic and underlining any words you desire, and even aligning your text. You can change the color of your text to any color that matches your photograph. I decided on white and selected my lettering to be bold because it was the color of the clouds. I used the "Australian Sunrise" font.

Now, it is time to print your fall themed birthday party invitations. Add some photo paper to your printer. If you don't have photo paper, you can use a heavy stock paper and it would still work fine. Select the File tab at the top left corner and select print. Now you have a few options here. First you will need to select your size. If you want just the photograph, just print a 5x7 or if you want a border, print a 4x6. You can also add a border to your photography by selecting the border and text options. This will give your invitation a colored border around the photograph, which will add some color around the edges.

Once your photo is printed, you can cut out your 4x6 or 5x7 fall theme invitation photo. If you are planning on making a back paper border for your 4x6 photo, you will need a heavy stock paper that is a color that matches your photograph. Cut your stock paper into a 5x7 square. All you have to do now is adhere your fall themed invitation birthday photo card to your stock paper. Put them in your 5x7 envelope and mail your invitation or pass them out.

http://picasa.google.com/.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

http://www.michaels.com