Harry Potter Party Invitations

During November, Mike and I started putting together the Harry Potter invitations. I was able to find a pic online of a "non-mean" looking white owl and Mike was able to clean up the graphic enough for me to use on the envelopes  (most of the owl images online looked mean and as if they were going to “claw-out” the kid who tries to open the envelope).

I bought aged paper and envelopes to print on (No folks, I'm not crazy enough to age my own paper, I do have 3 kids afterall...), and then wrote the wording of the invitations. Next, we downloaded Harry Potter fonts to use with the wording on the invitations and envelopes (there are many websites that show you how to do this). Mike downloaded an image of the Hogwarts crest to use on the top of the invitations and the back of the envelopes. Just when I thought we were done, Mike told me that he thought the paper didn't look "old" enough and that it would look even better if the edges were aged more. So I went to Michaels and bought some distressing ink and aged the edges to the invites.

Since we were planning on having a Platform 9 3/4, Mike thought it would be great to also include a ticket to the Hogwart's Express in the invitation. So he printed out tickets from a free printable I found online at:

http://harrypotterparaphernalia.blogspot.com/2012/01/lettersinvitations-platform-9-34-ticket.html

Finally I melted red wax, dripped it to the back of the envelopes, and sealed them with an “H” seal stamp that my friend Monica let me borrow. 

Caleb was so impressed with the invitation that he asked for me to make one for him too.