Ideas for Graduation Party Invitations

Your graduation party invitations need to be as special as this milestone event in your child's life. You can make your own invitations at home, using a little creativity, your home computer and a few items from the craft store.

Classic Elegance
These invitations are classic and elegant; just the thing for a sophisticated graduate. These instructions create invitations that will fit a standard invitation envelope, but you can make them larger, if you wish.

Materials:

• 8 ½x11 fancy card stock
• Vellum
• ¼-inch ribbon
• Small hole punch

Using a paper cutter, cut each sheet of card stock into quarters and set aside. Print the text of your invitation on the vellum, four copies to a page. You can choose to have your invitations either horizontal or vertical. When laying out your text, be sure to leave one inch at the top of each invitation.

Cut the vellum into quarters, trimming each one slightly so that each piece of vellum is slightly smaller than the card stock. Center the vellum on top of the card stock, and use the hole punch to make two holes ¼ inch apart in the top center. Put a piece of ribbon through the holes and tie a bow.

Scroll
These cute invitations have the look of an old-fashioned scroll diploma. You will need cardboard mailing tubes to mail these, or you can hand-deliver them.

Materials:

• 8 ½x11 parchment-style printer paper
• ¼-inch black ribbon

Print out your desired text on the parchment paper. Try to choose a font that looks like old-fashioned text or handwriting. Roll each one up, and tie it with a length of black ribbon.

Photo Invitations
Show how far your child has come with these cute photo montage invitations, featuring photos of your child from babyhood through the teen years.

Materials:

• 6 to 12 photos of your child
• Card stock

Using a photo-editing program, make a digital collage of photos for the front of your invitations. The finished collage should be 8 x 5 ½ inches. Next, type your desired text. Set up your pages to print so that when your invitations are folded, the collage is on the front and the text is on the inside.

If you do not have photo software, you can use photo prints and a glue stick to create a collage, then have color copies made for your invitations.