Design Inspiration

To select a design for your invitations, I suggest visiting some invitation sites to get a sense for some options and your design preferences.  Here are my favorites…

Cardgirl (well…of course!)

Wedding Paper Divas

TinyPrints

Peculiar Pair Press

Lucky Paperie

Style Me Pretty has a great inspiration page on her blog, as well as a chat string regarding DIY Invitations.

Quick Tip: You can lay out your cards so several pieces fit onto one page.  Print it first, then cut to size.  If you cut the cards first, they may be difficult to feed through your printer (or if you’re sending them to the printing press, it will cost you more to print in separate pieces!).

Layout

If you know & own Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop or InDesign, that will be your best bet for designing your invitations.  If you’re pretty comfortable with design, but do not own the software you may be able to download a trial version and get it done that way.  The software is fairly expensive, so it may not make sense to purchase it unless you have plans for future use.  That said…I love Adobe!!!

You can also get the job done in Microsoft Word or Powerpoint if you’re a savvy user.

Martha Stewart just added a “Print Wizard” to her site.  I’ve tried it out, and it works pretty well.  There are some limitations (it seems the font needs to be the same for the entire invitation), but it’s great for those of you wanting something nice & not needing a ton of control over the layout.  The wizard allows you to select fonts, ink colors & wording.  She has also added several word templates to her site.  You may want to check those out before designing your own - you never know, you may fall in love…

I also recently found this amazing software product…it’s inexpensive and very user friendly - and designed just for invitations!!!  There are two versions - regular and platinum.  The best prices are on Amazon…here are the links!

Font

The fonts you select for your invitations are a huge part of the overall look of your invitations.  For example, take a look at these two invitations…they have the exact same design, but two different font sets.

It usually takes some trial and error before finding the perfect combination of fonts.  When selecting your fonts, keep your audience in mind (will elderly people be receiving the invitations?) & select fonts that are legible…especially for the event details such as the time, place and date.  For example, the invitation above on the right hand side is much more difficult to read than the one on the left.

I am a huge fan of mixing fonts. I love the look of two fonts together - sometimes three, but only if done very well.  When you mix your fonts, just make sure the two fonts work well together.  For example, I would not recommend mixing a flourishy script font with an italics font.  I would also avoid using too many different fonts.  That starts looking a little messy.

Some of my favorite script fonts are Bickham (there are a few in this font family), Citadel, Zapfino (there are four plus ornaments in this font family), P22 Swash & Script, Shelley, Beau Rivage

Some of my favorite block lettering fonts are Copperplate Smallcaps, Perpetua Caps, Garamond Smallcaps, Garrison Light Sans Caps

Some of my favorite lowercase lettering fonts are Galahad, Papyrus, Century Gothic, Georgia, Garrison Light Sans, Remington Noiseless (typewriter font), Blue Highway

Some of my favorite childlike fonts are Adore, Tabitha, Teen Light

Or you can search here by keyword (ex. “script” or “wedding”) from a large database of fonts:

Note: When buying a font, be sure to purchase the entire “font family.”  Although it is a more expensive option, it may turn into a frustrating experience when you realize you didn’t purchase the swash capital letters, or you don’t have the font ornaments you wanted.  And the cost will be lower if you purchase them all at once.

Images & Motifs

My favorite places to find motifs are Istockphoto & Briarpress.  I can almost always find something from one of those two sites to work with the design I have in mind.

Unlike some of the other clipart type sites, Istockphoto allows you to purchase each image individually.  This is a really nice feature, as most of the other sites require a subscription.  The images can be downloaded as jpeg files, EPS or Illustrator.  This is also nice if you are a designer, because you can actually edit the images to work with your design.

Istockphoto also has a huge selection of photographs for download.  I haven’t used this much, but have looked through and there are some great options!

Briarpress has fabulous images for letterpress printing.  They have a large selection of printing cuts specifically designed for letterpress printing.  This also happens to be a great resource for letterpress printing.

If design is not your thing, but you’d still like to Do It Yourself, let me know and I can create a design for you that you can easily print and assemble on your own.  My design fees range from about $50 for a simple card, or up to $500 for a more complex wedding invitation.  Don’t hesitate to ask!  After all, isn’t that what I’m here for!?

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