I had the honor of co-hosting a baby shower for a sweet friend last month. I was asked to make the invitations and other printed materials. The theme was kind of a classy/French country/all white flowers type of thing. I was unsure how to do the invitations since I didn’t want them to be all white. I love the look of cards and invitations that are done with watercolors and are handwritten so I went with that. I did end up putting a little blue bow on it as well as a way to further let people know the shower was for a baby boy.
The picture above is a sample of what I came up with. I painted it and then scanned it into the computer so I could add the text. Instead of trying to use my own handwriting I used a handwritten font to achieve the same effect. The two free fonts I used are Sail and Mountain Retreat.
I am sharing my invitation with you to use if you’d like! I have made two blank versions so that you can download them and add your own text. One, is completely blank on the inside and the other I left the little decorative dots if you want to try and use the same format as me. I also made a fill in the blank version if you aren’t great at computery things. You can just write all the info in with your pretty handwriting. Of course, if you are using the blank version you don’t have to use it for a baby shower. It can be for whatever you like. You can even crop out the bow if you don’t want it.
The key to making it look like it really was painted is to print it out on quality paper. (And this digital version really doesn’t do the final product justice.) I used Epson Fine Art Velvet paper (which is what I print all of my artwork on) and it was so thick and soft. They are sized at 5×7 but I cut my invitations in an oval shape around the design. I also added the extra special detail of hand painting all of the envelopes with a pretty and simple leaf pattern on the front and back flap. I think that was a really nice touch.
p.s. I’ve been wanting to post this for a while but have been unsure what the best method is for sharing something to be printed. Hopefully this will work. Click on the links above and then when the image appears you can right click on it and save it as a picture.
OH, and if you happen to use them I’d LOVE to see what you did with it. Please send me a picture via email or on my facebook page.
©2013 Jocelyn Naquin All rights reserved. These are for personal use only.
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Having trouble with getting the yellow leaf color to print out – it prints out as a light grey. How can I fix this problem? Thanks!
Hi Brooke, I’m sorry you’re having problems! Do you mean the whole thing is printing out gray? I just downloaded it myself and printed it and it came out in color. I wonder if your printer color settings might be on the wrong mode? Have you tried printing something else to see if it comes out in color or in gray? Please let me know if anything works or if you have any further questions!
Hi, I seem to be having trouble getting the mountain retreat font in bold, I have been filing in the blank invitation with dots, and I can’t get the date, time, where, section in bold….did you manage to get this to be more bold than the other text in another way? please forgive me, I am not that computer savvy! Thank you in advance 🙂
Hi Yas! Thanks for writing. I will look into this tomorrow since it is very late here. I was using photoshop elements and it just bolded easily for me but I have a couple ideas of why it may not. I’m not the most computer savvy myself either! 🙂 I’ll let you know if I figure anything out. I know it’s frustrating when something doesn’t work like it should.
Okay, I haven’t been able to figure out why you might be having that problem. I was able to make it bold in microsoft word and in photoshop elements. hmmm. What program are you using? Will it let you bold other fonts? I’m sorry you’re having that issue. Maybe try a different hand drawn font? Here is a link to font squirrel where you can get free fonts. The link goes to the section for hand drawn fonts. There is one called “Frente H1” that has kind of the same look. Or you might see another one you like better. http://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/list/classification/handdrawn
Thanks for the help and quick response. I’m working on a mac, and don’t have photoshop, so that is likely something to do with it. It will let me use other fonts in bold, so I will take a look at that link that you posted. Thanks for posting the template 🙂
I’m on a Mac too but yes the program can make a difference I guess. So strange. Maybe when you downloaded the mountain retreat font it didn’t get all the info for it for some reason and so that is why it was unable to bold. Hopefully you have found something to work! And you’re welcome for the template. I hope it is helpful for you!
Thank you for being so sweet and sharing with us!! Absolutely beautiful and we cannot wait to use it!!
Thanks! So glad you like it! If you do end up using it I’d love to see!!
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