making banners/invitations

Hello Ladies!
Can any of you advise me on how to make banners and invitations and cupcake toppers like the professionals do? I am very crafty and kind of tired of spending a fortune on having someone make this kind of stuff for me when I know I can do it myself!

What type of programs do people use to make invitations (like the ones andreap or etsy makes)?

what would I need to buy so that I can make cupcake toppers and banners?

sample banner
banner
invite

Re: making banners/invitations

This was posted by another LIF member:


I googled for free owl clip art and saved a few different ones to my computer. I then googled light purple backgrounds and saved a few of those to my computer as well. From there I opened up a brand new MS Word document and clicked over to the "insert" tab. (I have a bit of a newer version of MS Word... not the newest, but not too old, so you're instructions might be a little different.) I clicked "Insert Text Box" which is in the middle of the tool bar and then "Draw Text Box". I drew a decent sized box in my document and MS Word automatically opened up a new tab (all the way at the end) labeled "Text Box Tools". While you're in this tool bar, you can change the shape of the text box (I changed it to one with rounded corners since it looked nicer. I was going to use triangles, but I wanted it to be as close to the one you posted as possible.) I clicked "Shape Fill" and then clicked "Picture" on the drop down menu and chose a picture to fill the text box with (one of the purple backgrounds). Now the first layer is done. I went back to the "Insert" tab and again clicked "Text Box" and "Draw Text Box". This time I drew the box just inside the first box I drew. Don't worry too much about the sizing right now, you can adjust it later. I went back to "Text Box Tools", making sure the interior text box is still highlighted, and changed the "shape" and "Shape Fill" (just to white). This time, I also clicked on "Shape Outline" and changed the outline to the prettier double outline and the outline color to purple. Then I clicked inside my interior text box and wrote whatever I wanted to, centered the text, chose a font and size et voila! Now you have one piece of your banner. If you're having trouble with things being covered up, right click and go to order. From there you can move things to the front or back and layer it as you want. You can definitely use the same process for the favors tags, invite, etc. Again, it's just really playing around with them and seeing how they come out. Good luck! And FM me if you have any questions or issues! I am in NO way an expert on this stuff, but I do it for a lot of parties and things for work so I have some inkling. And let us know how they come out!!

Re: making banners/invitations

Thank you! I am going to give it a whirl! :)