The Real Scoop on “Do-It-Yourself” Shower Invitations

For my sister’s shower I thought that I could save some money on her shower invitations by doing them myself.

Boy was that a mistake! I decided to purchase one of those kits from my local craft store that is supposed to help you make your own invitations from your home computer.

The kits, which included shower invitations, anniversary invitations and more, was fairly inexpensive. It came with the paper, envelopes, and sheets of vellum. The finished invitations that were advertised on the cover of the kit looked fantastic.

I thought that this kit would be the easy way for me to save a little money.

First I had to download the software onto my computer in order to make the invitations. Every time that I tried to download the software an error message popped up saying my computer was incompatible and would not be able to run the program.

I was frustrated by I decided to drive over to my parent’s house and try their computer since it was a newer model. I was able to get the program open on their computer.

I carefully typed in all of the pertinent information about the shower. I spent several hours making sure that all of the information on the shower invitations was correct and that the instructions to the country club were the shower was taking place were thorough enough.

There was a tutorial button on the program that showed me how to load the paper into the printer so I followed the prompts.

Just as I was about to breathe a sigh of relief that the invitations were a success, the first paper jammed. The only thing that printed was some black lines streaking across the paper.

After that, each and every subsequent attempt yielded the same results. The invitations would print out on regular white paper, but not on the fancy card stock that came with the kit.

I realized that I had wasted over half of the invitations in my attempt to get them to print so it was time for Plan C.

I went back to the craft store and purchased some scrap book paper that was thinner than the card stock.

I went back to my parent’s house and printed the invitations out on that paper. No matter how hard I tried to cut them out perfectly it was not an easy task. I was completely displeased with the finished product.

From now on I will have all of my invitations professionally printed!