Saturday, May 22, 2010

Invites: Fiesta Forty!


Hard to believe:
--that I'm planning another party
--that it's my 40th birthday party 


Many in my position would let the date pass hoping no one would notice, ask, or heaven forbid, celebrate, but I've never been shy about my years. I figure if I've made it this far I might as well celebrate! I've earned whatever marks age is leaving on me and, more importantly, I have so much to be happy about--no room to worry about looking older. 

So here it is: the birthday invite.


I'm going with a flirty fiesta theme so I decided to design the invite with some Mexican Papel Picado (hand cut paper) banners.  As I've confessed previously, I have the ideas but not the skills when it comes to graphic design. I really do wish I knew how to do this in Illustrator or Photoshop but my tool by default? Microsoft PowerPoint! At least the byproduct of years of creating marketing presentations in PowerPoint is a bit of knowledge about drawing in that program. Pretty fun really. So I created this banner with its drawing tools and even embellished the standard Goudy Stout Windows font with triangular "cut-outs" to give it a more south-of-the-border feel.




In case there are others of you out there who haven't found the time to take that online Illustrator course and might like to leverage my PowerPoint efforts, I'm sharing the file here:

Fiesta Forty Invite Template_AestheticNest

A few notes about the file:
  • The graphics are all "grouped". If you want to edit just ungroup and change at will.
  • As mentioned, I embellished the font, so if you aren't doing invites for a 40th and want to change the wording on the front, or the number inside, you'll just need to move around the little triangles. 
  • I have the file set up with blank spacer slides so that you can print 4-up, double-sided on card stock and have 2 invites per letter-sized card stock sheet (see thumbnails of the layout below).
  • I went to a local copy/print shop to have these printed for better color. Would have been fun to try something offset but I was a bit shy about starting the conversation out with a description of my PowerPoint file!

7 comments:

  1. Love how the flag garland isn't perfect. I also like your attitude on birthdays. Age is irrelevant, everyone should celebrate their birthday not for the number of years but for what they accomplished during the year. A.G.E. =Adventures, Gatherings and Experiences.

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  2. Super cute! Love the colors! I've never thought about using Powerpoint for stuff like this - neat-o!

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  3. this jumped right out at me because i'm also turning 40 this year (and my background is in marketing, and i have a patient husband and two little girls as muses) so i feel right at home here! this card design has a
    SUPER layout - love the graphics and the colors! i am totally impressed that you did this in powerpoint!

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  4. I love it! I also use Powerpoint for my graphic endeavors because I haven't yet learned Illustrator. I never would have thought to use the little shapes to create the banner and font. Excellent idea!

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  5. I just found your site when searching for fiesta decor. You have everything I need to help me plan my husband's 40th birthday fiesta! Thanks for all your work and everything looks AMAZING!

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  6. These are absolutely adorable!! Thanks so much for sharing...so kind of you. :)

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  7. what font did you use? love this!
    thanks

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