Making your own birthday invitations

I love making and receiving hand-made cards. I try to make my kids birthday party invitations every year. This year I had no idea how to make a Thomas the Train invitation and I was not feeling very creative since at this time of the year I feel that I have so much to do. My little guy's birthday always sneaks upon us, considering his birthday is in the early part of January. I am a new user of Pinterest. If you are not on and creating your own boards, you should! Let me know and I'll send you an invite. I have found so many ideas for home decor, homemade ideas for Christmas gifts and fun things for my kids to do. I often see things on websites, and then forget to put it in my favorites and then it is gone forever in cyberspace. So Pinterest is perfect for me, I can now find something I love, pin it to a board and it is there until I delete it! Awesome! I love how I can even organize those pins into categories! I love organization!! Anyway, back to my invitation. I found this one on Pinterest from The Scrap Shoppe. It's amazing!! She really did a perfect job!

 I love how professional looking it was and featured Thomas the Train. I do not have a Silhouette, but I thought I could probably do some of the same features using Microsoft Word or Publisher. I ended up using Word because that is what I am most comfortable with.

Directions for my invitation using Microsoft Word:

1. Changed the Layout Margins to 0.5

2. Went to the tab Insert and inserted a rounded rectangle shape. 

3. I changed the thickness of the line around the rectangle to 2 1/4 thick.

4. I then added 3 text boxes just like the photo above only I made the text box on the left a little longer.

5. I then added all of my text.

6. I added dotted lines around each text box rather than solid lines.

7. I added flags down the middle in blue and red for the  Thomas theme.

8. I then printed it out and added a Thomas the Train sticker in the bottom left corner.

The card stock I used was from Michael's and the cost was $0.49 per sheet and I was able to get 2 per sheet.  Here is the final product, I think they turned out nice. I always show them to my kids and if they are excited about the character and recognize what it is, then I feel that I have done well. 

Have fun exploring Pinterest and enjoy making your own invitations as well.

I did cut off the end of the ticket-like invite. Hopefully you can see it well.