Birthday invitations "how to"...

Kieran's first birthday invitation!

It's party time!  The last 11 months have flown by!  It's hard to believe my little dude is going to be one year old in a month!  He had grown so much and developed a sweet little  

November 2009

personality full of curiosity and silliness!  
I'm so excited to celebrate his first full year at my in law's home in New Hampshire.  My husband has two brothers, each with one son, and many cousins with many children of their own.  My hope is that Kieran spends his birthday having a ton of fun with his cousins and second cousins.  

Let the party planning begin!  First, we need invitations. Color theme: orange. (Of course!)  It's our favorite color, and Kieran's too ; )  After browsing in my favorite paper store, The Paper Source, I was pretty sure I had a design that I liked.  My inspiration came from this 40th birthday invitation that was on display. 

Please excuse the poor quality, cell phone pic...

It's graphic, modern and bold.  All I needed to buy was the orange envelopes. #10 open end, the other supplies I had at home.  


Not having a fancy program for layouts (like photoshop), it took a little fussing, but I figured out how to create the design using Word and "AppleWorks".  I typed out "one" many times using 4 different fonts and two colors. Next I copied the "one" s into AppleWorks.  There you can rotate the individual words by 90 degrees.  I did this until I had a nice ratio of horizontal and vertical.  Just do your best to line up the edges so you have a nice square pattern when finished.


Next, go back into Word and type out the details (name, location, time...). Copy that into AppleWorks and drag it into position.  This is what it looked like:

Then using your envelop as your guide for size, use a paper cutter the size down the invitation.

I used the edge of the words to guide me to insure an even border:

Print and cut as many invitations as you need.  Because I had a lot of HP everyday semi-gloss photo paper, and no white card stock, I used it for the invitations.  Either would be great but I am happy with the slightly shiny finish.


To make the cute sticker:

Duplicate the "one" square many times on the same page, I used plain white paper.  Punch out using a 1 inch hole punch like this one by Marvy Uchida which you can purchase at Michael's.

Now you are ready to stuff and seal!  Use a glue stick to adhere your paper disc to the flap.  Pretty simple! 

 Stamp, address and wait for the fun day!


Kieran had a blast while we were out in the park taking pictures of the invitations:

Is it crazy that I gave him an orange ball to play with simply because it matched the invitations?  Maybe just a little...