Birthday Party Idea for Saving your Money
Make your own Birthday Party Invitations (Thank You notes too)
A lot of my customers ask how I created my invitations, and the answer is ‘very easily’. Printing out your own invitations that you create on your computer is not only inexpensive, it allows you complete freedom to tie your invitation to the theme of your party. Even more importantly, your custom invitation can include that all important ‘hook’ or challenge that gets the kids excited about your birthday party from the get-go, an important component of a super-successful yet controlled party. To learn why this is so important, read my 7 Golden Rules for a Successful Birthday Party.
It’s always a trade between your time or your money: You can save maybe $10 on your invitations with only a minimal investment of your time. Another $10 if you repeat the process for your Thank You notes, with the added bonus that it will be much easier to get your child to actually do the thank you notes on the computer rather than by hand.
Your Invitation does NOT need to look professional: Remember- this is a kids’ party. Your invitation needs to announce your event, get them excited about your party and look nice. It needs to appeal to whatever age kid you’re sending it to and clip art is the secret- catch their eye and draw them in to the rest. You can search for free clip art and find tons of sites, but you won’t find copyrighted characters. If you have Microsoft Word, you have automatic access to Microsoft Clip Art at their Office Online site (View > Toolbars > Drawing, the little box on the toolbar with the “insert clip art” prompt, then choose the “Clip art on Office Online” link).
You could use a photo of your birthday child instead of clip art: One great idea for your invitation is to have the birthday child dress up to show your party theme and use the digital photo as your artwork. The funnier the photo, the more you child hams it up, the better. Word will even allow you to put text over the photo. (After inserting your photo into your Word invitation, left click on the picture to highlight it, then click on Format in your Word toolbar > Picture > Layout, and choose Behind Text. Now you can create a text box for your text and drag it into the picture wherever you want it to appear, making sure to choose ‘no Fill’ and ‘No Line’ for your textbox on your drawing toolbar.)
Limit your Color Printing: Printer ink is darned expensive, so don’t overdo the size of your image. You can even convert your graphic to black and white and use your precious colored ink sparingly in the text instead. This will take two printer runs- one with printing set to black and a second for your colored text (File > Print > Properties > then find where your printer software allows you to convert from printing in color.) See my blog post about saving money on your printer ink.
Make your text look FUN: Word gives you oodles of fonts you can choose from that will make your invitation more appealing to the kids. Some of the most ‘kid-friendly’ ones I like are Comic Sans MS, Jester, Bazooka, Cuckoo, Porky’s, Singboard. (View > Toolbars > Formatting to get the font toolbar on your Word screen, then up at the top you’ll probably see a box that says “Times New Roman” [Word’s default font] with a down arrow you can click to see the various font choices and what they look like.) You can get more free fonts to download by searching for ‘download Word fonts’.
Invitation Size: Unless you have a quarterfold card maker as part of a graphics software package on your computer, you won’t be able to manipulate your clip art and text to turn it upside down as required for a standard folded card. No Matter! Make it a full page– little kids do better with bigger things anyways. Fold it like a letter, and it fits in a standard #10 business size envelope. Another way to go is to use postcard sized cards you can get at Staples (on your Word Toolbar, File and hit the arrow at the bottom to expand the choices > Page SetUp > Paper > Paper Size > Postcard or Envelope #10.)
Decorate your Envelope for maximum effect with the kids: Repeat your clip art on the envelope, scaled down, or add a related but simpler piece of clip art. Use your fun font and make the address nice and big – kids LOVE getting any mail and their own name in big bright letters is even more special.
Make it Different from the Usual: A great way to do this is to include something inside the invitation, perhaps something that they bring to the party. A ticket to get in, a piece of paper with a number on it that perhaps determines which team they’re on or which goodie bag they get, one piece of a puzzle (graphic) that you printed and cut up into odd sized pieces that they then need to piece together when they arrive (a great activity while you wait for the stragglers).
See examples of winning homemade birthday party invitations on the Birthday Party Games Lady website– click on any of the 5 party links and you’ll find the actual invitations I created for my parties about ½ way down each party page. Warning- these invitations often cause kids to beg to come and be included in the fun!
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