How to Make Your Own Indie Invitations

When making invitations, your options are limitless. You have so many items to choose from and to use for embellishments and decor. When you're at your local craft store, go to the kids section, where you'll find loads of affordable construction papers and glues, and also stop by the stamping section where you'll find glitter, pastels, stencils, inks, paper shape punch-out's, stamps and more. The prettiest invitations can be made from sturdy or heavy weight vellum papers. Vellum has this glowing, but iridescent sheerness to it, that when layered with shades of either lightened, pastels, or dark paper, it looks amazing and phenomenal. You can also stop by the scrapbooking sections, to add extra embellishments, such at silk leaves, pressed flowers, stickers, rub-ons and more.

Today, you will learn how to make an invitation, using vellum and transparency paper. I will provide a template, but will not print out the designs onto the vellum or the transparencies.

You can get vellum and film transparencies at any office supply store, such as Staple's, Office Depot, Michael's and Joanne's. I would recommend using the industrial printers at the office supply stores to print on your clear transparencies because most home printers are not equipped to handle film transfers, unless you have a top quality laser printer or a really great ink-jet printer. If you do have a great printer, you'd set your printing options to the photo settings before you begin. You can also refer to your printing manuals as well to guide you to the proper settings for printing on transparencies. Furthermore, once you have gathered the suggested materials below, it's also a good idea to pre arrange your items and layout, before you cut, glue, or stamp anything.

Needed materials:

1. Vellum: it's cloudy, but clear. You can use red, blue, green, pink, or just white. The white vellum seems to bring out the brightest colors when printing items such as flowers or tiny scene scapes for graphics. I once made an entire calendar from vellum and it was beautiful!

2. Inks and or stamps: Depending on the look you're hoping to achieve, you may want to use ink pads, stamps, and designs.

3. Rubber stamps: Rubber stamps come in an array of designs. Stamps are now made from several sizes and also come in simple edging or border stamps.

4. Punchout Shapes: Punchout stamps allow you to add designs to your cards or projects. They also come in all sizes and are like paper hole punches, except they come in an array of shapes, such as hearts, moons, animals, and more.

5. Printer Ink... Lots depending on the size of your invitations...

6. Markers: It's up to you, but if you are going to be in the business of making cards, scrapbooking, or art, it's good to have these items just laying around for your use.

7. Glitter: fine, dusty, micro, mica powders, and sponges for application: It's always good to add some sparkle to your projects, right? Why not pick up glitter. You can decide which colors you'll be using.

8. An embossing gun!!! These are REALLY neat and can be used for paper and metal as well!!!

9. Scissors and an exacto knife. Use with caution.

10. Glues - Gels or Elmer's Glue. I'd recommend using a paint brush to smooth the glue out, when applying layers.

11. Wax paper surface.

12. Your imagination and creativity.

13. Cardstockpapers: You can usually get them in a pack, from Michael's Art's & Craft's or Joannes's.

14. Envelops! You have to mail these little jewels off, right?

15. Ribbon, straw, yarn or hemp fibers...

Before you decide to cut, punch, glitter, paint, stamp or stencil, there are things you should think about, such as:

1. What size will your invite be?

2. How many are you making and do you have enough time?

3. What is your invite for? A wedding shower, a birthday party for a teenager, or an invite for yourself? A child's party? A wine tasting party?

4. What type of design are you aiming for? Will you be using extra/spare photographs of things such as flowers, or adding something about a trip? Does your invitation have a theme of any sorts? Do you want a hip and unique invite?

5. How many invites are you making?

It's always a good thing to have a blue-print to avoid mishaps, mess and waste.

First print and or draw your designs. You want to get that out of the way, because you want your focus to be on the other parts.

If you want a simple flower, go to the internet and search in free photostock sites that will allow you to use their images for free or for a small fee, that way, you can have the freedom of using as many images that you need as long as you want, plus you're not stealing images off the net. If you're artistic and have the gift of drawing, then you can trace out your designs!!!

So take your cardstock and measure it out. What sizes do you need or want? You can make a small invite, that tiny and to the point, but glam it with embellishments!

Do you want a window in or on the front page of your invite? Here is where you'll need the exacto knife, which will help you trace out your shapes. I would recommend using a small wooden square block to trace around for safety and to keep your fingers out of the blade's way. It's your choice!

One nice and clean design is to get a pre-folded card from a card stock, cut out a window, print out a beautiful vellum image, and then affix the vellum image to the window, giving the card a 3-d effect. Leave the inside of your card blank. Why? Well, you can take that space and add your party details. Please see the photo of the card template for a more detailed explanation...

To make it clean, crisp and elegant, take another piece of card stock, or even iridescent paper and print your party details on the paper and place it inside the cards. If you are familiar with word, or Adobe Illustrator, you can design a pre-squared template, add your details within the framed boarder, align, center, add a few free hand brush strokes and then print. I would recommend making a 4x4 template of 4x3 squares. It's almost the same as making business cards, but you're making invites, so you want your squares to be a little bit bigger.

Also, decide how many squares you'll be printing, and cut them out using a paper-cutter, to get a clean perfect edge, unless you're great with cutting in a straight line... I'm not...

Ok, now that you've done the hard parts, it's time for fun. You have all of those pretty sparkly goodies to use such as paper, glue, glitter, metal and plastic embellishments, stencils, markers, shimmer powders, stamps and whatnot. How you design your card is solely up to you. I can't really tell you how to design your card. That's something you'll have to decide. I can only give you a few ideas and clues as to what routes to go. I'd also suggest surfing the net for finished examples, that way, you'll have somewhat of an idea of what direction you'd like to go towards, regarding the design and layout.

I prefer to make a simple card for now. You can make an 3 panel card, that opens up like a brochure, or a simple two panel card. I have provided a blue print for both card styles as a photos attached to the article. I opted not to show a pre-designed card, so that you will have the freedom to be original.

It's also your call what details you decide to add to your invitations...

Please also see finished cards to various projects on the net and pre-made template designs as well that I've included...

Give yourself time to practice. To be good at any craft requires devotion, patience and practice... Don't be afraid to also purchase craft paper scrapping books as well in your local art stores.