DIY Birthday Invitations

Making your own birthday or party invitations is a great way to save a little money when planning your event.  Have you priced custom invitations at a professional printers lately? Yikes!!  It’s easy to create that same custom look at home!

I recently helped my friend put together the birthday invitations for her daughters’ upcoming party and thought I would share the step-by-step process with you. 

Here are the supplies we used:

~ Lightweight cardstock (heavy scrapbook paper)

~ Sheets of vellum paper

~ Raffia or ribbon of your choice

~ Paper cutter and/or scissors

~ Hole puncher

~ Computer & printer

~ Envelopes

You’ll print the wording of your invitation on the vellum paper and layer it on top of the cardstock. First, design the wording of your invitation in your computer’s word processing software, which will help you determine  the size of the overall invitation.  Her invites were printed on 4.5”x7.5” vellum paper layered on top of 5.25”x8” cardstock.  You can download cute fonts from dafont.com for free to really personalize your invites. 

Next, use a paper cutter to cut your paper to size.

So now you should have your top invite and background paper all cut and ready to layer.  Use the hole punch to punch two holes about 1.5” apart in the top center of both papers, leaving about a 1/2” margin of the cardstock of  around your vellum paper.

Now cut the raffia/ribbon into pieces about 7” long.

Use the raffia/ribbon to join the two pieces of paper together.  Insert each end from the top of the paper through to the bottom, cross over and back up through the opposite hole.  I didn’t take photos of that step, but email me if you need more detailed info.

Here they are all finished up: Voila! A cute and custom invitation! The possibilities are endless with this type of project, just use your imagination and creativity.  You can decorate the invitations further with stickers, rhinestones or other embellishments to fit your theme.

An alternative way to assemble the invites is by using two coordinating papers glued together and accented at the top with a bow or other embellishment glued on.  Just have fun with it!