Designing Invitations Using PowerPoint

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As I’ve mentioned before, PowerPoint is a great amateur graphics design tool.  I used it several times in graduate school to create diagrams for presentations and posters.   More recently, it’s come in handy for creating homemade wall art (see here, here & here).

Well, now I’ve found yet another great use with PowerPoint…designing invitations!  I designed these adorable invites for my BFF’s shower earlier this month.

(image edited for privacy)

Since I’ve used PowerPoint to do so many projects, I thought it might be helpful to share some of my tips and tricks for using it as a design tool.  So, here’s the tutorial for making the invites, but the basic idea can be used to create tons of great projects. 

Monkey Themed Baby Shower Invite Tutorial

Step 1:  Size of Invite

I wanted to make a 5x7 sized flat invitation.  Luckily I found this great embossing card stock at 50% off from Hobby Lobby one day. 

It was a nice thickness and would worked well really well for this project.

Step 2: Background and basic layout

First, open up a new document in PowerPoint.  Resize the page as needed, in this case to 5x7.  I also made the page portrait instead of landscape.

I had a basic idea in mind for the invitation, and started by creating the background in the basic colors of the shower.  I did this by inserting rectangles and stretching them to the size I wanted.  Even the gray line is a long thin rectangle. <Go to “Insert”, “Shapes”>

Step 3:  Dressing it up

To jazz it up, I added a “J” for Sarah’s last name by clicking on the center of the brown square.  Then go to “Insert”, then “Text Box” and click the brown square again.  A cursor will show up in the middle of the square…type away!

And then a repeating pattern of stripes and dots.

In PowerPoint, use can select one or more objects using the mouse and then use Ctrl-C to copy and Ctrl-V to paste over and over to get these repeating designs.

You can also “Group” objects by selecting multiple objects, in this case rectangles, using the mouse.  Then go to the “Format” tab, then Group.  Grouping makes moving items around easier some times.

Step 4:  Adding Clipart

To find a monkey for my invitation, I searched the PP’s clipart.  To access the clipart, go to “Insert”, then Clipart.

Type whatever you link in the search box.  There are SO many things to chose from!

Step 5:  Editing Clipart

After finding just the right monkey for my invite, I added him to the invitation.  Then I resized him to fit the perfect spot on the invite.  I didn’t want the entire monkey body and I wasn’t crazy about the color either.  What to do?

Well, I’ve found that you can edit many clipart images pretty easily.  First, with the image selected, right click and select “Edit Image”.

A window appears…click “yes”.

Then you can click on any part of the image and delete it:

Or click on other parts,

Go to the “Drawing Tools” tab and change the fill color to anything you like!

After a little messing around I ended up with this cute little guy:

Step 6:  Adding Text, the final touch.

To add text in PowerPoint, you simply add text boxes wherever you want them.

For this invite, I had three separate text boxes.  This allowed me to move the individual items where I wanted them which makes for easier formatting.  You can click the text boxes and move them where you want using the mouse.  You can also make minor “nudges” using the arrow keys.  This works for all objects in PP.

At this point, I simply printed the images onto my card stock.  Be sure to adjust the page size on the printing properties.  The default is regular paper size.

Confused yet?  I hope not.  This is a my first tutorial using screen shots.  I thought they would be helpful in understanding exactly what I did to make these invites.

Stay tuned…I’ll be back to share how I made adorable monkey using the same PP ideas from this tutorial.

I’m linking this up to the following parties:

      

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