Yesterday I posted about the train party that I recently did for my son. Let me tell you… If I wasn’t in Interior Design, I might just be in Event Planning! So much fun!

Once I decided on a theme, I did a lot of research on printables.

via Ellison Reed on Etsy

Via TracieAnn Printables on Etsy

I liked some of the options that I found, but most of them were not quite right. As usual, I started to realize that I could create most of these designs myself. On another note, I have used Avery office products at work in the past and I envisioned using a few of their products for the invitations, thank you cards and name tags.

Obviously, the first place to start was the invitations. I used the Avery Notecards shown here as the medium for both invitations and thank you cards. Once I had the medium selected, I was able to download the template from the Avery website (using the template number on the box) and create my design in Word.

Here is a breakdown of how I created the design for the exterior of the invitations:

I created a separate document for the interior of the notecards, using the same motif.

After getting all of the details just how I wanted them, I printed a test page to ensure that my alignment was alright. First, I printed the exterior designs making sure that each page fed into my printer correctly and there were no ink smudges. A few minutes later, I printed the interior designs. And Voila!

For the Thank You cards, I didn’t want to limit writing space on the interior of the cards. Once again, I used the motif from the invitations and changed the text.

Last, I used another Avery product for the name tags. This kit provides both holders and name tags. Again, I downloaded the Avery template and used various shapes and fills within Word to design the name tags.

Again, I did a test page and carefully printed each sheet.

Whew! That was a lot of explaining and I hope that you enjoyed seeing the process! Reading over this tutorial I am thinking to myself, “Wow, that looks easy!” Rest assured, there were about 10 other versions that did not make the final cut. But I was able to design and print exactly what I had envisioned for my son’s party. Having that option was very important to me and I enjoyed creating something of my own!

There are a lot of options out there on Etsy for printable invitations, but I have decided to make my printables available to you here. They are the raw Word documents so you can alter them for your own event or use them as a jumping off point for your own designs!

Name Tags on Template2

Note: This is not a sponsored post. Any opinions shown here are my own. Using printables can be tricky at times. La Salle Design Blog is not responsible for any printing mishaps that may be associated with these files.