How to Make Your Own Creative Halloween Invitations

A creative Halloween invitation will start your party off the right way.

Halloween is a creative person's dream holiday. Not only can you express your personality by your costume, but if you throw a party, you also can expand your impact with your party invitations, decorations and foods. The invitation sets the tone for every aspect of the holiday, so come up with a specific theme for your party and then use your computer skills and software to create a one-of-a-kind invite that your guests will save for years.

Things You'll Need

• Party theme
• Theme-related jpeg files
• Digital camera
• Photoshop or other photo enhancement software
• Desktop publishing software
• Half-fold blank invitation card stock
• Halloween font
• Color printer

Instructions

Preparing the Image

1. 

   A Halloween theme challenges hosts to be creative.

   Determine a theme for your party. Narrow the focus to one Halloween-related thing, such as monster movies, characters from horror classics, famous killers or scary urban legends.

2. 

   There are various classic images online available for personal use.

   Find theme-related images online to use on your invitation. For example, if your theme is monster movies, search for a classic black-and-white image of Frankenstein's monster from the 1931 classic.

3. 

   Use a high-resolution photograph of your face to personalize your invitation.

   Take a digital image of your face to use on your invitation. Save it as a jpeg file on your computer.

4. Open your Photoshop or other photo-enhancement software. Open your image file of Frankenstein's monster, then open the digital image of your face.

5. Use the Magnetic Lasso tool to trace the contours of your face in the digital image. Click on the selected face image and drag it over onto the black-and-white monster image.

6. Resize the face image to fit onto your monster movie image. Click on the face "layer," then go to "edit" and "free transform" to get the "handles" to resize the photo appropriately.

7. Match the color of your color-photo face image to the movie poster. In this case you want to make the image into a black-and-white photo. To do this select the face layer, then go to "image" and then to "colorize" or "hue and saturation," depending on your software. Adjust as necessary.

8. 

   Save your images to your desktop to make them easy to find later.

   Save your completed image, in this case the image of your face on the monster movie poster, as a jpeg file.

Putting Together the Invitation

1. Open your publishing program, such as Microsoft Publisher or Print Explosion Deluxe. Choose a blank, portrait-oriented, half-fold invitation template.

2. Drag or insert your digital movie poster image onto the front of the party invitation so that it occupies the upper two-thirds of the card front.

3. Insert a text box on the bottom third of the card front and write your opening text. Relate the text to your theme. For instance, for a monster movie theme write "A Monster of a good time is awaiting you..."

4. 

   You can find many "scary" fonts online.

   Reformat your font to a scary look appropriate for a Halloween invitation. Highlight your text, then go to the font formatting icon to change it.

5. Go to the inside of the card template and add a text box. Type your party information including the day, date, time, theme and RSVP phone number or e-mail address.

6. Highlight the font, then go to "font" or "format" and change your font to match the front of the card. Be sure the font is easily readable as well as spooky.

7. Load your printer with half-fold card stock and print following your software or printer instructions.

Tips & Warnings

• Go online to find free, Halloween-inspired fonts to use on your invitation.

• Make your envelopes match the invitation. Use a smaller theme-related graphic under the return address label to make an eye-catching envelope.

• Don't run out of ink. Always check ink levels in your printer before beginning to print your invitations.

References

• go sammy: Superimposing in Photoshop
• HP: Easy Halloween Ideas

Resources

• Read this Article in Spanish
• Office Microsoft: Create an Invitation in Publisher
• Halloween Fonts