When you’re preparing for a birthday party for your friend, child, parent, or spouse, you’ll probably find that the costs associated with all that planning can exceed your budget pretty quickly. One way to save money is by creating your own birthday invitations at home. Not only can you save money this way but you can also take the time to pre-print the party details and to create something creative on the cards that will make them truly unique. Here’s some help to get you started.

Supplies You’ll Need

First, you’re going to need some paper and printer ink cartridges. You can either purchase card stock paper that is blank which you can fold into the appropriate card shape after printing or you can buy blank cards that are ready for printing. The latter has become a very popular option. Of course, most of these blank cards are available via online stationery stores so you’ll have to place your order early. Second, make sure you have sufficient ink for the task, including colored ink. Be sure to purchase matching envelopes if they do not come with the cards you buy. Having some labels you can use for printing is also a wise idea.

Setting Up the Card Printing

Most of the cards or paper you purchase will come with instructions for printing. If not, your best choice is to go into your Publisher program (or similar software) and select the choice for greeting cards. You should update the paper size information to meet the dimensions of the cards you’ll be using so the printing will appear on the card correctly. Do a few test prints on blank cheap paper first. Always buy some extra cards in case mistakes are made during the printing process.

Using Mail Merge & Labels

To make your task of sending the invitations easier, you should consider having address labels printed. Then you can just affix the labels to the invitations and/or to the response cards so you don’t have to spend all that time writing out the addresses by hand. To do this, you should follow these instructions:

• Choose the “Mailings” option from the tool bar.
• Select “Start Mail Merge Process” from the options available in the new tool bar.
• Under that option, select the type of document you want to create. In this case, pick “Labels.”
• Enter the information about your purchased labels into the new box that opens in the middle of the screen.
• Choose “Select Recipients” from the toolbar. You can either access a list you’ve already created, create a new list, or import contact information from your Outlook address book.
• Print off the labels. Consider doing a test print on blank paper first to make sure everything lines up correctly before you waste those labels.

Printing Birthday Party Invitations

Be sure to start creating those invitations a few weeks in advance so you can mail the finished cards at least two weeks before the party.

Tags: birthday invitations, card stock paper, colored ink, labels, printing process, prints, stationery stores, test print | Category: Creative Printing Ideas | Subscribe to comments | Leave a comment | Trackback URL