Make Valentines Day Party Invitations

Materials used to make Valentines day party invitations:
8 1/2 by 11" card stock
decorative paper or colored paper
heart paper punch
glue stick or glue runner

Materials I used to make these valentines day party invitations:
81/2" by 11" red card stock
8 1/2" by 11" plain white 20 lb. paper
scrapbooking background paper
glue stick

This is a pretty quick and simple card to create. It can be used as a party invitation, or even change the text on the front of the card to "Be mine", "Happy Valentine's Day", etc. to make Valentines Day cards.

STEP 1: Laying out your text. For this particular card laying out the text can be just a little tricky. What I did was search out a heart graphic on the internet and paste it onto the page on my desktop publishing software.I then centered my text to the inside of the heart and copied and pasted it as many times as I could to one page.
To do this just go to whichever search engine you like to use the most and do an image search on the word "heart" or "valentine" or similar. You can also try using some of the free clip-art sites available on the web. Once you have found your image just right click on the image and select copy. Then go to your DTP software with your page set up. Select "file" and scroll down to "paste" (or just hit "Ctrl" + "C"). Your heart will appear on the page. Once you have centered your text into the heart copy and paste the entire image.

You will also need to lay out the text for the inside of the invite or simply download a free text template from my "free printables" section.

STEP 3:Cutting the paper. You will have three separate pages to cut.
First you need to cut your card stock in half to create sheets sized at 8 1/2" by 5 1/2".
For the front of the card you will need to cut out the heart embellishments with you text. Since you copied a heart image to set your text into, you now have a guideline for cutting out the hearts. Simply use a pair of scissors and cut around the borders. I cut to the inside of the border for my card but you can choose to keep a black border around yours if you like.
Next you will need to cut the inside text into small squares. It is best to cut these squares a good deal smaller than the dimensions of the card so that when you adhere them to the inside of the card there will be a border of colored paper around the square. Also they need to be small enough not to peek through the heart cut outs to peek out to the front of the card.

The final cut would be your embellishment paper. I used a scrapbooking background paper. Since my paper was sized at 8 1/2" by 11" all I had to do was cut them into quarters. Otherwise they would be cut to 5 1/2" by 4 1/4".

STEP 4: Paper punching! To make valentines day party invitations a good tool to own is a heart shaped paper punch. Using your heart shaped paper punch, punch four holes across the bottom of the card. start at the corners first and then fill in the middle. It is best to make them slightly askew from each other as it is quite hard to have them perfectly straight and centered to each other. This way there is no way to mess up!
(make sure and hold onto the heart punch outs that are left over as you will use them later to top off the card!)

STEP 5: Fold It!. It is best to fold the card before you start construction. Sometimes cardstock can create a messy wrinkled fold if you don't score it first. Scoring is basically creating a straight line crease into the paper before you fold it. You can usually purchase a small scoring tool at a craft or office supply store.
Otherwise just make the fold and run a straight edge (such as the side of a ruler) over the fold to help make a clean crease.

STEP 6: Glue it all together! Start with the inside of the card. Using a glue stick adhere your embellishment paper to the bottom half of the inside of the card. Next adhere you inside text centered on top of your embellishment paper. Make sure it is placed in a way so that it does not show through your heart shaped cut outs on the front of the card.
next simply glue down the heart shape (with the text) onto the front of the card. top it all off by gluing down a couple of the heart shaped punch-outs created when punching the card stock. Viola!

More tips and ideas to make Valentines Day party invitations...

* Try adding some ribbon embellishments for a little extra pizzazz
* Punch out hearts out of felt or another kind of fabric to help top off the front of the card* Use these ideas to make valentines day cards, or make valentines for kids to hand out at school instead of an invitation.

See also...

Print free quarter fold Valentines Cards and/or invitations

Printable Valentine's Day postcard templates to make valentines cards or invites

Valentine's Day greeting cards

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