Statistics tells us that 2.3 million couples get engaged every year in the US; 19% of all those engagements take place during the month of December and 10% on Valentine’s Day.

With those facts in mind, I thought this would be a good time to do a tutorial on DIY engagement party invitations.

I call today’s invite “Damask Engagement Invitation” and we are using free vector art (x 2) and Illustrator. As always, if you get stuck or are unsure of where to find a tool, read through a previous tutorial, and look at my posts about the tools and Illustrator notes and problem solvers. For font issues, see “How to add fonts to your computer“.

Now, let’s make the invitation:

1. Download the free vector file “seamless pattern” from seamless megapack 2 at designious.com.

2. Download the free vector file “framedoodle” from Pixels & Ice Cream.

3. Unzip the files and open them in Illustrator.

4. Create a new document, any size you want, I made mine 6.25 wide x 4.5 high (a size A6).

5. Go to the seamless pattern document. Select the background and damask pattern (not the text). Copy and paste into your new document. Size it to fit by typing in your document’s dimensions in the transform palette (with the entire design still selected). You may need to click the “constrain proportions” to make it work properly.

6. Select the background only (by clicking somewhere in between the damask pattern). Cut it and paste in place on a new layer (CNTRL + F will paste it in the exact same location on the new layer). If the new layer is on top of the pattern, pull it below.

7. Lock the layer with the damask pattern; we won’t be touching that again.

8. If you want to change the color of the background like I did, select it and pick any color you want (I used R207 G235 B242).

9. Lock that layer and create a new one on top of both layers. Select the Rectangle tool and click once on the artboard. A window will pop up where you can put in the desired dimensions of your box. I made mine 6.25 x .05″ and filled it with the same color as the background. Pull the colored bar to the middle of the card.

10. Go to the document with the framedoodle. Select the entire design, copy it and paste it in a new layer in your document. We only want the outer part of this frame, so with your white arrow, select and delete the inner part (the dots).

11. Once you have just the outer portion of the frame left, select it and group it. I wanted it to match the color of the damask pattern on the bottom of the card, so I selected it and picked a matching brown. Even though it seems like it is the stroke color that should be changed, it is actually the fill color.

12. As you can see, the frame is transparent, and we want a white background. Select the frame and look at the Fill and Stroke section of the toolbar. You’ll see that it has a brown fill and no stroke (even though it doesn’t look that way). Click the Swap arrow to reverse that. Then, select the paint bucket,  set the fill color to white (either in the colors palette or in the fill and stroke part of the toolbar) and as you hover over the frame, you’ll see a text that says “click to make a live paint group”. Click and the frame will be filled with white.

13. Re-size it if needed (I made mine a bit larger) and place it where you want it on the card.

14. Create a new layer and add the text. I used Carleton 12pt for the top and third row, Carleton 9pt for the fourth and fifth row, and Ribbon 131 Bold at 24pt for the names.

Voila! Your own homemade engagement invites! If you want to be really budget-minded when printing these invitations, you could make them smaller, and put four on a page. I suggest making them 5.25×4 – that way you can fit four of them on a standard letter sized page with a little bit of a margin around the edges (since many printers don’t print all the way to the edge). Print on nice heavy cardstock and cut to size. They will fit in a size A2 envelope.

If you don’t want to or can’t print them yourself, ask at a local print shop or office store – they will most likely be able to help you.

Related posts:

1. Engagement Announcements In Purple, White And Gray – An Illustrator Tutorial This is part 3 in my series of tutorials for...
2. Save The Date Postcards – A Step-By-Step Illustrator Guide Making your own Save the Date cards is fun and...
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Wedding engagement announcements are sent to friends and family to let them know your big news, just like baby announcements. In the coming weeks, I will also post tutorials on how to make engagement announcements and engagement party invitations using Illustrator.

Also, this announcement could easily be turned into homemade printable wedding invitations. Just remove the photo and put the invitation wording in its place, perhaps using a couple of different fonts.

A Note About Vista Word
When using Vista, in order to make some of the adjustments to the photo, make sure that the document you’re working in is saved in the current Vista format (you’ll see a .docx extension). I have set the defaults in my Word application to save everything as Word 97-2003 documents (.doc) since .docx isn’t compatible with earlier versions of Word, or Macs. Working in the 97-2003 format also has other advantages such as the option to select all the pictures and textboxes at the same time, great for aligning them, or moving the entire design around on the sheet. However, there are limited special effects available when working in 97-2003 mode, so in order to play with the photo (see step 5), you need to save your file as a .docx document.

Today’s announcement looks like this:

I have sized it to 4.5×6.25, which will fit perfectly in a standard A6 envelope (but you can obviously make it any size you want).

1. In Word, go to “file” (i.e. the Windows symbol that replaces the old “File” menu) – New and under Templates, click on Invitations. This brings up a new menu on the right hand side. Click on Other Invitations. You’ll see the same layout in 4 different colors. You can choose any one you want of course, but I went with the blue and brown one.

Click on the color you want, and click on Download. That will bring up a document that looks like this:

Click on the blue box on the right hand side and copy it (either by right clicking or pressing CNTRL+C). Open a new document (letter size is good) and paste the box here (by right clicking or pressing CNTRL+V). Right click on it, go to Text Wrapping and select In Front Of Text. Right click again and go to Size. Uncheck the Lock Aspect Ratio box, and in the height window, put in 6.25 and in the width 4.5. Click Close.

2. Now, let’s add the text. Go to Insert – Text Box – Draw Text Box and draw a box anywhere in your document. It will most likely be filled with white, but that’s fine, we’ll fix it later. Select the font you want under the Home menu (you can change it later) and type in your text. I used GeoSlab703 Lt BT, 22p Bold for the top box and 14p bold for the bottom one. (If you want to use that font but don’t have it on your computer, read this post about adding fonts.) Click outside the textbox and go back to Insert and draw another text box for the text below the picture. Type in your text and click outside the box to deselect it.

3. To format the text boxes, right click on one of them, and go to Format Text Box. Under Colors and Lines, you want to make sure to select No Color and No Line. Repeat for the second one.

I also made the text color brown, and to do that, you want to select the text (i.e. highlight it with your cursor), right click, click on the A with a color bar underneath, go to More Colors and select the one in the bottom left hand corner for a nice, deep brown.

4. Now, let’s add your photo (I used a clip art picture). Go to Insert – Picture and locate your photo on your computer. It will most likely end up behind the blue box, so right click on it (the photo), go to Text Wrapping and select In Front Of Text. Right click again and go to Size. This time, you want o make sure that the Lock Aspect Ratio box is checked, and put in the size you want in either the height or width (the other side will change proportionately), I set my photo to a height of 2.89″ (but this is obviously totally up to you, whatever looks good is good). Click Close.

5. Drag the photo to where you want it to be on the blue box and, if you want to, add some extra layout features to it. I added a frame with a reflection on the bottom. To to this, select the photo and go to Picture Tools Format (it’s in the menu on top of your page). There you’ll see a line of frames and if you click on the down arrow next to them, you’ll get a whole menu of different looks. Hover over each with your mouse, and you’ll see the effect on your photo. Select the one you like, and if you want to play with it even more, try all the different options on either side of the frames. There is an endless variety of shapes and special effects to choose from.

6. Make sure everything is aligned by selecting the photo and blue box and go to Picture Tools – Align and click on Align Center. Next, select the two text boxes and go to Text Box Tools – Align – Align Center. Now you just have to eyeball it and use the arrow keys to move the text so that it is lined up with the photo. (Why, oh why, did they set Vista up this way?). That’s it, you’re done! Your own engagement announcement cards!

You can fit two of these cards on one sheet of 8.5×11, and then all you need to do is trim them to size and mail them out. If you prefer to send them as postcards, you could get a rubber stamp with a postcard back and just stamp the back of each card.

Related posts:

1. Make Your Own Save The Date Cards Using Microsoft Word In today’s tutorial, we’re using Microsoft Word to create Save...
2. Make Your Own Engagement Announcements using Windows Vista This starts a series of tutorials for those of you...
3. Engagement Announcements In Purple, White And Gray – An Illustrator Tutorial This is part 3 in my series of tutorials for...

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