Make Kids Birthday Invitations
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Making your own kids birthday invitations can save you money but more importantly it can create some quality time for you with your daughter! She will love getting to make her very own birthday invitations and she will love for you to be doing this with her.
Making your own invitations can also come in very handy for a theme birthday party. It is not always easy to come by an invite that closely matches your theme. This particular invitation here would be great for a ballerina inspired girl's birthday party. Just chenge up the decorative paper, paper punch shapes, colors and fonts and you've got a whole new invite hopefully to match whatever she chooses for a theme.
Materials used to make kids birthday invitations:
8 1/2 by 11" card stock
scrapbooking background paper
regular colored paper or construction paper
decorative border scissors
balloon paper punches
thin ribbon
For the kids birthday invitation I made I used two different scrapbooking background papers. I chose one as a birthday themed paper, and one themed towards pink girly things, hence the ballerinas. I also created a sort of picture frame effect using scallop edged decorative scissors, and balloon shaped paper punches to add decoration.
Step One: The printed words. The text for the front of the card can prove to be a little tricky. You want to create rectangle shapes for the front of the card which is easy enough but making sure that the text is correctly aligned within these rectangles is another story. To make this task easy I recommend using desktop publishing software to first create a box sized at the same dimensions as your rectangles will be. Then place the "You're Invited" text into the middle of this box centered or aligned as you would want it. Now copy and paste to duplicate it several times to fit it on one page as many times as possible. After printing this you will cut them just inside of the lines to create the shape on the front of the card.
For the inside text of the card it would make the most sense to create this as a
2-up lay-out
(or two cards to a page) as I have shown in the illustration to the right.
* If you want to make these kids birthday invitations cards but would opt out of having to create the text I have made it easy for you! You can download the text for the front, and inside of the card as well as a template for creating the "picture frame" shape on the front of the invitation.
click here to download the girl themed kids birthday invitations text.
Step Two:cutting the papers. When using a 2-up layout it is inevitable that you will have to cut your invitations in half. Cut your cardstock base in half to make two pieces measuring 5 1/2" by 8 1/2" so that when folded will make cards measuring
5 1/2" by 4 1/4". You can cut these yourself with a
hand cutter (click here for more info and where to get one)
or you could lighten your work load and bring them to a local print shop or copy shop to have them cut for you. This is especially helpful if you are making a large volume of invitations. It is inexpensive, easier than cutting them all yourself, and you will get a perfectly measured clean cut every time.
Next cut your decorative paper (I used scrapbooking paper as usual but you can use whatevr type of paper suits you). For this invitation you will cut two different papers into rectangles measuring 2 1/8 " by 5 1/2" each.
To make the picture frame display on the front of this invitation first cut squares out of a colored paper measuring 4 1/4" by 3 1/4". On the backside of these squares draw a margin on all four edges about an 1/8" in. This makes a guideline to cut the edges with decorative scissors.
*(if you download the text file from me - available above, it already contains a template for creating this shape easily.)
To complete the "frame" cut squares from white paper or cardstock measuring 3 1/2" by 2 1/2 ". Attatch this to the inside of the scalloped edge piece with a gluestick, centering it on all sides.
Step Three: Making paper punch decorations. Using a balloon shaped paper punch, punch out many balloons in different colored paper. Choose one color for a medium/large sized balloon punch. Using a smaller balloon punch make smaller balloons in three different colors.
Step Four: Assembling the girl's kids birthday invitations. Begin by gluing the decorative paper rectangles to the base of the card. Center one paper to the top of the card and the other to the bottom. Cut small lenghths of colored ribbon (about an inch to an inch and a half). These are used to hide the seam of where the two decorative papers meet. Use a craft glue like Elmer's to attatch them to the seam at the outer edges of the card.
Next attatch the "picture frame" pieces centered to the middle of the card so that it covers the ends of the ribbons. Attatch this using a gluestick so you will not warp the card.
The last step is to attatch the balloon paper punches. I attatched the larger balloon to the left a little offset of the "frame" so it would overlap just a little bit. Place the other smaller balloons on the opposite side facing in the same directions so it looks like they are floating away.
I even went one step further and applied some glue and glitter to the inside of the kids birthday invitations. I used a font which I deemed girly enough to fit this card. The font I used for the text on the inside of this card uses hearts in place of some letters. For example the letter "O" and also dots the "I's" with little hearts. So I went ahead and filled them in with pink glitter. It looks so cute!
More tips and ideas for making kids birthday invitations in girly themes...
* Use different decorative papers to help match your theme. You can even simplify by making them using just one decorative paper instead of two.
* Add glitter to the balloons or to accents on the decorative paper.
* Use different shaped paper punches depending on which kind of theme you choose for your party.
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