The theme for the baby shower has been selected and a guest list has been established. The next big job and one of the hardest is selecting a baby shower invitation. There are so many different ways to do this and it really depends on what best fits your situation. Many people like to find a free printable baby shower invitation and they will spend a good deal of time online searching out sites that offer free baby shower invitations.

While these are a great starting point it is not where you want to finish. Meaning do not search online and find a free invite and then just copy it and send it out to everyone. Many people might ask why not this is quick, easy and simple. However, is quick, easy and simple the message you want to send to your guests? Isn't it really like saying well I have no time for this and it does not really matter so I will just slap something together? It probably not the message you want to communicate to the guests. First of all the shower will have bad attendance and the mother to be might be kind of sad also.

This does not mean you can not use free printable baby shower invitations nor does it mean you need to spend a large some of money to get some custom printed invite either. There is a lot of room in between these two extremes.

So go ahead and search online and look at a lot of free printable baby shower invitation. First of all you might just find something that you really like and with just a little tweaking you can easily customize. Second, if you do not find exactly what you are looking for by browsing what is available you can find a few ideas you like.

So no matter what you found either the perfect free invite or a few different invitations that might work with some modifications just save everything that you find. Typically these will come either in a zip file or as an adobe acrobat reader file so it is difficult to change.

Once you have your ideas of cluster of multiple ideas it is time to take some action. With basic computer skills the invitation can easily be tweaked, customized and even personalized to what you really want. So just use what you found online as source materials for ideas, colors, and wording.

You can use any of the following ideas to take your standard free baby shower invitation found online and add to it.

Microsoft Word Using Microsoft word is a great way to automatically add in the invitee address, name and more on the card. You will want to first set up an excel spreadsheet with all of the attendees listed first and last name and address. Make sure you put a clear header on the spreadsheet and then save it. Once you get back to Microsoft word go through the mail merge menus and merge to the spreadsheet you just created. This will allow you to add in their first and last name and you can even make a field in excel for a personalized message.

Publisher If you found some ideas that you like for baby shower invitations but not the exact one then spend some time in Microsoft Publisher, Adobe PhotoShop Elements or other print type of software. Since this is part of the Microsoft suit of products it can be learned fairly quickly. Depending on the file format that you downloaded for your free printable baby shower invitation you might be able to directly edit the card in Publisher. However if you can not do this because of the file type you can easily recreate your own version. Often it is better to recreate your own theme based on a few different cards that you like. Simply pick out the details that you like in two or three different cards and work on combining the elements together to make a unique card. It is really easy to do another search for baby shower clip art and find lots of great free clipart to assist you in creating the invitation.

Keep in mind that Publisher also has a mail merge feature. The nicest thing about using a mail merge is you can print beautiful envelopes and baby shower invitations with the name, and address of the person. By suing a printer and mail merge you will get a beautiful finished product that you can be proud of.

So yes there are free printable baby shower invitations available everywhere online. These provide great sources of ideas and planning. However, when it comes down to the actual invitations it is much better to customize the invitations.

About the Author
Sam Smith is the webmaster ofBaby Shower Guides. A great resource for: free printable baby shower invitations

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