Design Your Own Bridal Shower Invitations

We are entering wedding season yet again! How many people do you know getting married this year?

I'm lucky to know two happy couples tying the knot this summer! One is my younger brother and the other is one of my best friends.

I'm co-hosting a bridal shower for my friend in early March so I needed to get the invitations designed and in the mail.

Sure you can always buy invitations, but what fun is that?!?We are makers and the DIY gene is in our blood. Plus I like to have the invitations set the tone for the event.

Today's tutorial is mostly screenshots showing you how to design the invitations in Silhouette Studio software (which is my favorite design program by the way).

Start with a blank page and then click on the draw a polygon tool on the left-hand side. Select the pentagon shape.

When you draw the shape you'll see that a slider bar is in the center. If you click on it and slide it back and forth you'll discover that you can change the shape! I want a hexagon shape so I just slid it up to 6.

Stretch and change the size of the shape as you wish. I want an elongated hexagon shape so I just stretched it taller and straightened it out.

Next, I changed my page size to match my card size, sized my hexagon, and centered it using the align tool.

I wanted a bold line to define the shape. This is easily done by changing the line thickness, the top left corner is where you can quickly find the thickness settings.

Next, I added some watercolor floral designs from the silhouette design store.

This is the top flower design and this is the bottom flower design. Both are designed by the talented Angie Makes, I might own everything she has in the store.

These designs are the perfect match for the wedding theme which is soft pink and sage colored florals.

The one floral design has the white background which I don't want. The simple fix is to use the crop tool to remove that. Select the design and then click on the crop tool.

Much better! I don't need the cut lines since this is a print only project, otherwise, you would need to trace the design again to get them back.

I flipped the flowers vertically so it worked better with my design.

Then, I removed the red lines around the other floral design. Click on the red box in the top left corner to change the line color to transparent.

Move the design and resize it as needed to fit the hexagon.

I wanted to change the color of the hexagon to match the watercolor flowers. Click on the line color tool again and you'll see that there is a little eyedropper in the corner. If you select that you can pick a color from your design so it's an exact match.

It's looking good! Let's add the text now, the hardest part is picking the perfect fonts. I probably spent about an hour playing with different fonts trying to decide.

I went with Beloved Sans for the simple clean font.

I changed the fill and line color to black.

What bridal shower invite doesn't have a beautiful script font as well?

I used Love Hewits from the new Valentines design bundle. It's absolutely gorgeous!!

Change the color and line to black again. After resizing it to fit your card you can use the align tool to make sure it's all centered.

Once you have it exactly how you want it, go ahead and select the whole design and group it together. Right-clicking pulls up the shortcut menu.

Next, design the inside portion of your card with all the details about the event. I used the same two fonts and just changed the sizes as needed and then used the align tool to make sure it's all centered.

Now the tricky part! Figuring out the best way to print it on your printer is what took me the longest to figure out. I ended up selecting the A5 paper size since it was the closest size to my cards.

You'll need to change the page size to match your current printer and then orient the wording so it will print properly. I used a guide to show me the center. All you need to do is click on the ruler at the top and drag down to create one.

Once you've done a test print to make sure that everything is set up correctly you can change the print settings to the best quality for crisp and vibrant prints.

Repeat the process to print the front side of the card.

After confirming I had the right set-up I had it print multiple copies. I just had to stand by the printer hand feeding the cards into the bypass tray.

For my printer, there is a slot on the back for the bypass feed. I can only put one card in at a time to avoid a jam.

A few cards were wasted in this process!! Make sure you purchase plenty of extra unless you know your printer well.

I also made stickers for the back of the envelopes.

This is the floral design I used for them. This time you need the cut lines since it will be a print and cut on sticker paper.

I also ended up printing the addresses on the envelopes. Here is the final look!

I absolutely love how they turned out!!

What events do you need to make invitations for? Are you going to attempt to design your own now? It's addicting! Up next are the invitations for my son's second birthday.