Hi Ladies.. I am going to share how I made my invitations and how easy it actually was. My Fiancé and I are on a very tight budget for our wedding and we are doing our best to do a lot of the work by ourselves. One of the things I thought I had decided off the bat however was that I wasn’t going to make my own invitations but as we looked nothing I liked was in our price range. I wanted something with nice thick paper and I also kind of had my heart set on a ribbon at the top. Well I almost thought that it was out of the question until I decided I was going to make my own place cards for the table. I went to Wal-mart picked up some card-stock paper and it all started there. I was able to make all of my invitations, reply cards and place cards for 186 people and it cost me less than $45.00, oh yes and a little more effort! I have to say thought that the effort was well worth it for all of the compliments I have received for the work I put into them.

Materials Needed

Card Stock Paper
Printer
Scrap-booking scissors (your choice of pattern)
Folk- art paint
Single hole punch
Ribbon
Paint brushes
Scissors (for cutting ribbon)

Instructions

1. The first step is to decide on the wording that you would like to use on you invitations. Then create a document in a program like Word (I didn’t want to spent the money on a special program jus to make invites!!)

2. Make your document two pages long by putting a second copy of your wording on the next page.

3. Then set it up so they both will print on one regular size of the card stock. Like the picture to your right.

4. Now fold the paper in half and cut out each half carefully along the edge. (It should now begin to resemble an invitation!!!)

5. The next step is to paint your design on the bottom of the invitation. I am having a rose theme and I stuck with that for the invitations too.

6. The first thing to paint on is the leaves. (See picture below)

7. The next thing to do is to paint the rose in the centre.

8. The last step is to paint curly Q’s around the edges. (I got the pattern for my design from a Donna Dewberry book from the one stroke series)

9. The next step is to punch two holes in the top of the invitation. Make sure your hole will allow the bow to be in the centre. My advice for this is to find the centre of one of the invitations and measure the distance you choose on either side. For mine I chose 0.5cm on either side of the centre so that the middle of my ribbon was 1.0 cm. Once you have measured it out on the first copy the way I remembered it was I just remembered what letters in the first line the holes were above and I found that this worked really well.

10. Once your holes are punched you can put your ribbon in. For the first ribbon you should allow some extra length as you can always trim it after. Take you ribbon and place it shine/front-side up and insert the two ends into the two holes (now the ends of the ribbon are at the back of the invitations).

11. Now cross the ribbons and put each end out the opposite hole it was the first time. Trim the ends of the ribbon and voila!!

12. I used the same idea of the card stock and folk-art paint to create my reply cards and place cards as well.

13. Good-Luck and Have Fun!!

The finished product!