Building a Invitation Template By Hand

For 2-up invitations or 4-up invitations

Building your invitation template completely by hand is actually very simple, but naturally just takes a little more work. This is a great alternative to trying to figure out how to get your text just perfectly centered for 2-up or 4-up invitations templates, or tricky text lay-outs. You only need to do this if you do not want to use desktop publishing software, but still want those nice, neat printed words on your handmade invitations. Also, you will need to have these brought to a copy center for duplication, or do it yourself on a copier. Printing them from your home computer is not an option.

How you go about building this invitation template depends on what size and format you wish for your invitation to be.

First you will need to typeset the words you want to appear on your invitations using whatever word processing program you have available on your computer. Align the type to whichever style fits your taste. A centered alignment works best for most invitations, and any invitation that contains verses or poems.

Next make a guide to help you align the text in the correct position on the page. The text must fit the format of the invitation. You will be doing this by taking a plain sheet of white paper and folding it to match the format of your invitation template. For a two up invitation fold the paper in half. for 4-up invitations (or postcard format) fold in half one way, and then fold the paper in half again over the first fold.

With a ruler, line up against the creases in the paper and use a dark or black marker to trace a solid

line to match where the paper was folded. You will use this paper only to help you align your printed text to another separate clean piece of paper. This separate page will become your invitation template.In other words, you will only be placing a clean sheet over this page in order to see the marker lines through the page. The Marker lines serve as guidelines to match up and align the text.

Like the example below...

Next print out the text from your computer that you wish to use in your invitations. Cut the text out from the printed sheet leaving about a half inch margin around the text. When cutting the text out it is best to keep whichever straight edge is closest to the text. This also serves as a guide to align your text.(Depending on how many invitations will fit on one sheet of paper, you may need to print additional copies.)

For the last step of this process you will use either double-sided tape, glue, or some other sort of adhesive to attach the text onto the page in the correct alignment. It won't look pretty at first, but once you copy them onto your chosen invitation paper the results are just as nice as if you used desktop publishing software. The best adhesives to use are semi permanent glue or tape runner. Semi permanent adhesive makes it so that you can pick up and move pieces without ruining them.

If you decide to copy them yourself, you may run across the problem of shadows or dark lines showing up on your photocopies. To alive this problem just adjust the brightness on the copier, or use an opaque white tape to hold down the edges of your text cut outs. If you bring it to a copy center they should be able to correct this problem should it arise without you even asking. Copy centers usually offer a lot of other services that would be of help to make your own invitations. Ask about hydraulic cutting, scoring and folding.

desktop publishing softwares

setting up 4-up invitations

setting up 2-up invitations

setting up invitation templates with Adobe Pagemaker

go from manual invitation template to Card making basics