Hummingbird Wedding Invitations
This tutorial is based on a Save the Date card we created earlier, so if you missed it and want to give these invitations a try, just hop on over to that post and put that card together first.
As always, if you get stuck, see if you can find help in my Illustrator tips or by doing a quick review of the Illustrator toolbar.
Turning your Hummingbird Save the Date card into a wedding invitation is so easy! This is how I did it:
1. Open the Save the Date card you created earlier.
2. Go to File – Save As and save it as Hummingbird Invite (or whatever you want to call it).
3. In your Hummingbird Invite document, go to File – Document Setup and in the dimension windows, put 5 for width and 7 for height (if you want to go the traditional route).
4. Unlock the bottom layer, click on your 5×5 background color square and in your Transform palette, put in 5 for the width and 7 for the height. If you don’t see the Transform palette, just go to Window – Transform and it will pop right up. Align your box with your document. Lock this layer.
5. I happened to like both where the illustration ended up by chance and the size of it on the invite, but you can obviously resize it and move it any way you want. If you want to do it my way, just leave it where it is and make sure that layer is locked too.
6. Go to your text layer and change your text.
That’s it!
If you want to keep the invite square, that’s obviously even easier. All I would do then is just make the illustration a little bit smaller and change the text. You may have to space it a little bit differently than I did on the 5×7 invite to make it fit, or change the wording slightly. Be creative and play around with the layout until it looks good to you.
Filed under Design, Illustrator, Tutorial, Unique Invitations, Wedding Invitation | Comments (2)6 Ideas For Giving Your Printable Wedding Invitations A Unique Look
With so many great looking invitation choices, how do you make yours a standout? Below are a few ideas.
1. Wordle
For a very different look, use Wordle to turn your invitation into a “word cloud”. Just type in your text and watch the magic happen. To make the cloud to the right, I typed in some classic wedding invite lingo, hit go, and voila! Once your text appears as a cloud, you can play around with colors, fonts and layout. For some of the words to appear in larger font, type them in several times (I typed wedding, Justin and Susan four times each, and June and 14 three times). Once I was happy with the cloud, I did a “print screen” (Ctrl+Print Screen on a PC; Apple+Shift+4 on a Mac) and saved it as a jpg. Personally, I would probably use this only as a fun design element, and have the text in an easier-to-understand format somewhere else on the invitation as well. While your 15-year old nephew will most certainly get the message from the cloud, your great aunt may not.
2. Silhouettes
Before the invention of cameras, silhouettes were extremely popular, both in the US and Europe, and talented silhouette artists created portraits of their customers by cutting their profile out of paper with scissors. Once cameras appeared, silhouettes sadly went out of fashion. But they are regaining their popularity and luckily, there are still a few silhouette artists out there who can create custom silhouettes of you, your pets and anything else you’d want. How about wedding invitations with the silhouettes of the two of you? Super cute! Some artists also offer to come to your wedding (or other event) and cut silhouettes of your family and guests.
3. Print your invitation on something other than paper. How about sending out custom printed T-shirts, Frisbees, post-it notes or baseball caps? They can be very affordable, and people are sure to remember them.
4. For very informal invites, take a bunch of Polaroid photos (of the two of you, the location of the wedding, or anything you want) and write the details (by hand) on the white bar on the bottom.
5. Send out bags of printable M&Ms with your names and wedding date printed on them. This works best as a Save-the-Date, since you can’t fit the entire invitation on the tiny candies.
6. DVD Invitations. Sending out your invitations as mini-movies on DVDs allows you to get really creative – acting, singing, or if the thought of that makes you cringe, maybe just the two of you telling your guests about how you met, and/or about the wedding. Include footage of the church, reception hall, and perhaps recommended hotels, etc.
This is just a short list to get your imagination going – there are so many fun possibilities when it comes to making your invitation something very unique, one that people will remember and talk about for years to come. Don’t limit yourself by going with the traditional kind: have fun exploring the alternatives!
Filed under Unique Invitations | Comments (4)