DIY September 15, 2020

How to Design Invitations and Stationery

A personal touch that I just love is printed invitations and personalized stationery.

It is an old school idea, but in a world overloaded with technology, snail mail is a nice breath of fresh air.

I’ve started using stationery and mailed invitations whenever I get the chance. There are so many cute options out there for you to purchase but they can get expensive.

In this post I’ll go through the three steps making your own including:

Elements of Design
How and Where to Design
Printing

Elements of Design

Before you even start designing your invitation or stationery, start to find some of the elements you may want to include.

My biggest suggestion for this is to get inspiration first. Go through Pinterest or Google and save pictures of stationery and invitations you like.

Odds are you can recreate them pretty easily while still putting your own personal twist on things.

Monograms and Crests

Monograms and/or crests are a very classic (and grandmillennial) way to personalize anything.

A customized monogram and crest can get expensive fast.

So I suggest finding a stand along monogram you like and then finding different crests you can customize.

Personally I have loved my Shuler Studio monogram. It was the best $8 investment because I use it all the time.

I purchased the monogram for our wedding invitations, but it was also put on koozies, cups, napkins, and I used it for our Christmas dinner party invitations.

There are tons of other options on Etsy as well as different websites.

Graphics

Another element of the design you will want to consider is the graphics.

I love the look of watercolor, but once again getting this done custom can cost a lot.

Thankfully there are plenty of artists out there who will digitize their artwork and sell it online for a reasonable price.

Once again, Etsy is a great place to shop for this. Try “____ watercolor clipart”. For example I searched “bow watercolor clipart” for my stationery design and found the below:

Watercolor Blue Corner Bows Digital Clip Art Set Instant image 0 — I like the corner design of this option

There are so many other images you can search for. Flowers, fruit, plants, banners, borders, and so many more.

I like to get inspiration from invitations and stationery I see on Pinterest or Etsy and search for similar images.

How and Where to Design

My favorite way to design anything is Canva. There is a free version and it is super easy to use. There are templates for everything imaginable as well. You can also order the printing from Canva, but we’ll get to that later.

You can choose a template or start with a blank design. If I already know what I want it to look like, I will start with a blank design. However if I am not sure what the design will be, I browse the templates and find one I can customize.

You can upload all of the graphics that you may have rounded up in the first step and start to place them in your design.

Printing

The tricky part of all this is finding a place to print that isn’t crazy expensive.

For nicer invitations, I really love Basic Invite. I used this website for my wedding invitations.

The quality is great, and they can print addresses straight onto the envelope which is great. Plus there is almost always a coupon code for 15-20% off.

However, if you don’t need all of that another great option is Canva. As I mentioned briefly earlier, you can print your designs. I did a lot of research on printing options when I was getting ready to print my wedding invitations.

After pricing a lot of places out, I see that Canva’s prices are very reasonable.

And great for small projects. For example to order 10 of our Christmas dinner invitations would only cost $10 which is very reasonable. Other places could be $25+ for the same thing.