Whether you give out birthday party invitations or anniversary invites, you only want the best for your guests. Instead of using something that’s store-bought, consider the benefits of DIY or custom invitations. By doing this, you can save money, use your creativity and make truly unique invitations for your baby shower, wedding, anniversary, or even retirement party.

Have fun immersing yourself in the creative process by choosing your own colors, designs, fonts, and following these helpful tips:

1. Start designing early
It’s easy to put off your design work until the last minute. The problem is you might end up misjudging how long it will take to complete everything. Consequently, this may cause you to rush and produce designs that aren’t up to your standards or simply not finish them in time. To begin with, try creating a plan, so you can stay organized and focused on your goals. In addition to this, you might want to start designing a few weeks or even several months in advance.

2. Choose a visual style
Most invitations belong to a particular visual style. One way you can find examples of these is by browsing Shutterstock or Pinterest. You can also create a mood board to collect inspirational pieces of typography, color schemes and visual styles. A mood board can motivate you to get involved in the creative process, because you can bring your imagination to life a bit more. The visual style you choose should be fitting to the occasion and appropriate for guests. Help create a memorable event for everyone by personalizing your invites.

3. Define your color scheme
In order to define your color scheme, you can educate yourself about color by learning color theory. You can also get creative on your own by experimenting with various combinations of hues. For instance, consider custom invitations, or use watercolors or another medium to create them by hand to see how they might come out. Furthermore, the colors you choose must fit the particular event. For one, rustic wedding invitations will likely be more aesthetically pleasing in brown and green than in blue and pink, which is a color combination usually reserved for baby shower invitations.

4. Use a pre-designed template
A pre-designed template can save you a lot of time, money and effort when designing wedding invitations, birthday party invitations, retirement party invitations and more. In fact, you’ll be likely to have plenty of attractive template choices to choose from. Another benefit is pre-designed templates may look a lot more professional than your own designs. The benefits of creating designs yourself mean you can make them more personal, creative and unique. Although this will take plenty of time and effort on your part, you may enjoy the creative process, and be more pleased with the outcome.

5. Use a classic font
Since every detail comes together to create the right look, try using a classic font. From rustic wedding invitations to anniversary invites, the font you choose adds something extra special to the final design. You can choose a classic font that’s bold and expressive or lightweight and pretty. To figure out which one fits, try different fonts with your design, then pick the best one. Additionally, you can use calligraphy, computer software or anything you choose to create the perfect invites.