This is a first of the series on Ziki’s Party Planning Edition. I shall share with you how we pulled off a simple and enjoyable book party for our little man who just turned one. I will give you tips and recommendations that may also help you coordinate your child’s birthday party.

I have been conceptualizing for Ziki’s dedication and first birthday party since he was six months old. There were a lot of ideas and it wasn’t only until two months before his actual birthday that we finalized what we wanted for his party. We decided on giving Ziki a book party because: 1) He loves books and he loves being read to [because he can’t read yet]; 2) We want to build his library;and 3) We wanted a unique party theme. There’s nothing wrong with giving your child a cartoon-character theme. But we deviated from the norm because I feel that it’s just too unoriginal. And since our children are unique, coming up with an uncommon theme for your precious one is just suitable for them.

My husband loves to create artsy stuff and I am a fan of crafts so we decided to make this party D-I-Y as much as possible. DIY is also good especially when  you are working within a limited budget. Not that you will scrimp on the party elements, but you just know which ones you like to incorporate in your child’s birthday party and customize to your heart’s content.

So when we were able to settle with the color motif, we began with the invitations!

Because it is a book party, my husband and I collaborated to create the invites. It was designed like a library card. We got the base template off the web and photoshopped in the other details.

Front side of the invitation

Back side of the invitation 

[I have blurred out some personal information for privacy concerns.]

Since it was also his dedication, I felt that it would be more heartfelt if we send an additional invitation for his godparents. Though a bit rusty, I wrote a personalized poem asking them to be Ziki’s ninongs and ninangs. :)

 This was sent to all the Ninongs. :)

And this was given to all the Ninangs. :)

The photos were taken with a humble Canon point and shoot camera and I just did a bit of tweaking with Photoshop. As for the fonts, these were all free fonts that you can download online: Pea Sugar Noodles, BadIntentions, Rough Typewriter, and FFF Tusj.

We had the invitations printed at our friendly printershop, while we sent e-invites to other guests. The Ninong/Ninang cards were sent via online as well.

Making this invitation was such an enjoyable experience for me and my husband. I love how our creative minds joined together to come up with this invitation. Though it is no longer a unique concept (if you search online, many have already made library card inspired invitations), it was still cut out from the rest because of the personal details we put in. In the end, it was a cute invite and we were happy with our guests’ feedback.

So there you have it, a DIY invitation that you can also make. Just use the resources you already have and fish off an idea from the web, tweak it a bit and make it your own. Hope this helps. :)

Stay tuned for the next part of this series. ;)