Need Creative, Free, Handmade And Computer Invitation Ideas For Your Baby Shower?

The invitations are one of the most fun parts of getting ready for a baby shower. They are also a more important factor in the success of a baby shower than you may realize. The timing of when they are sent, how they look and who gets them will play a huge role in making the baby shower one to remember and one that makes the expectant mother feel special. It is important to remember that etiquette experts are still holding out strong against the Internet, email or text messaging for invitations and thank you notes that should still be more personalized and hand addressed.

Invitations for a baby shower should match the theme, style and formality of the shower. For example, an elegant linen paper stock with engraved lettering and a foil lined envelope sets the tone for the shower being held in a formal function room, but would send a completely wrong message visually if inside it invited guests to a backyard barbeque to celebrate the upcoming birth! Choose a style of invitation that matches the event.

Invitations do not have to be costly, and should in fact only account for a small percentage of your budget. There are more important areas such as food, photography and gifts where your dollars would be more memorably spent. Invitations can be color copied or printed at a local print shop, ordered online, computer generated at home, completely hand made or even sent out over the Internet. Here is a sample of inexpensive idea for invitations: Make tiny diapers out of surplus white scraps from a fabric store, use a safety pin, and attached it to blank cards from a discount store, attached a ribbon and voila! Just enter whatever information you want on your invitation

Handmade Invitations

A visit to your local craft or scrapbook store will tell you quickly how popular handmade invitations have become. As you walk the isles there will shelves filled with decorative papers in solids and patterns. There will stickers, rubber stamps, die cut shapes, and templates for every theme imaginable. You can enjoy yourself browsing or ask for help finding the baby shower themed products they carry. You may be overwhelmed at the variety of papers that carry pink and blue baby themed patterns. Many craft and scrapbook stores also will have made up samples of different types of cards or scrapbook pages. You can borrow from these ideas or create your own based on the choices you see before you for styles of folding, color palettes and rubber stamps. There are techniques you can learn at one-day seminars or “stamp camps” offered by most craft and scrapbook stores. Chances are if you are inclined to make your own invitations, then you are already a cropper and have your own ideas.

You can also order card and invitation supplies from direct sale companies such as Stampin’ Up or Creative Memories Both companies sell supplies for card making and scrapbook making including coordinating papers and inks and fanciful stickers and decals. Their catalogs are also referred to as idea books, because they contain a wealth of samples of cards others have made and from which you can create your own handmade baby shower invitations.

Computer Generated Invitations

Many home computers come complete with software packages that contain titles for creating your own flyers, banners, cards, and invitations. If yours did not, some affordable and popular titles can be purchased online for between $10 and $40. One of the more user-friendly invitation making software products is Microsoft’s Picture It Publishing.

It contains templates and color choices for invitations in ½ page or ¼ page formats, that fold to fit invitation sized envelopes you can purchase at any office supply store. It sells for around $25. Also from the office supply shop you can get papers to use in your home printer that are thicker and more elegant. These higher-quality papers are designed for ink jet or laser printing. The only real drawback to printing invitations from the computer is that none of the ink or images can bleed off the page, a look that some people may want.

Havas Hallmark Card Studio, priced around $45 and SNAP Card and Invitation Maker, priced around $10 are two other software titles that are easy to use. SNAP Card and Invitation Maker lets you pick the perfect picture or background and write your own clever saying. Numerous ready-made templates make projects easy, and with 5,000 illustrations to choose from, you can make a card for any occasion. Havas Hallmark Card Studio has dozens of templates suitable for baby shower invitations as well.

Both of these software products can be personalized with the details for your shower, put into the color scheme you like best, and printed on any kind of paper that will go through your home printer. The more expensive programs generally give you a larger library of templates, giving you more creative options.

Also using your home computer, you can go online to invitation design sites and design your own baby shower invitation to be downloaded and printed at home. Many of these services are free, such as the one at HP, Hewlett-Packard Go To Hewlett-Packard's home page and search on their site: "invitations baby shower" (The link is way to long to try to include here.)

The HP site is great because it gives suggestions for paper to match your design choice and complete downloadable instructions for the nice touches such as punching little holes in the top of the invitation and tying an organdy ribbon through them. Have Fun!