Unique Birth Announcements at Basic Invite

Guess what everyone! I had a baby! Look, I even made a birth announcement!

unique birth announcements baby brady

Okay, that was 10 years ago, but it’s never too late to announce it, right?

Right?

Oh, yeah. It kind of is. In fact, by the tenth year, they just call that a birthday party invitation.

Still, I had fun playing around with the baby boy birth announcements on a new-to-me site called Basic Invite.

When I first visited Basic Invite I was drawn in by their beautiful and easily customizable wedding invitations, RSVP cards, and all of the wedding-related stationery. It made me want to get married! But since my own wedding was 15 years ago and I won’t be having another one, I’ll just have to admire their pretty pictures and hope I get invited to one.

Same with the unique birth announcements offered on Basic Invite. These did not exist (at least online, affordably) when my kids were born. I guess if they did, I was in a new-mom-induced haze and figured my blog posts about them were enough. But look at all of the amazing options new parents have now to mail a physical announcement of the new life they brought into the world.

birth announcement boy in hat

Just like with holiday card websites, you can choose the layout of your card, and you can pick from many different artsy templates of font and color. Basic Invite has organized their templates by theme (botanical, rustic, simple, etc.) to help you narrow the choices down if you wish. And of course you can preview everything before you order. But Basic Invite offers a few different things that I haven’t seen before.

-Colors: other sites give you a few choices for color backgrounds in their templates, but Basic Invite lets you customize them with almost any color. How many times have you had the perfect photo and the perfect layout, but that green isn’t quite right? Here you can tweak each element of the card until it’s perfect.

-Printed samples: not only can you preview your design on the screen, but you can also get a sample sent to you in the mail so that you can see what your design looks like printed, and feel the quality of the paper.

When I decided to play with the customizable birth announcements even though my youngest baby just turned 10 (sob), I found that my favorite feature is indeed that you can customize every little part of this design. Here’s the template’s basic setup:

unique birth announcements basic template

I changed the photo, removed the giraffe’s tutu, and changed the color and content of the text. It was super easy and I got to use whatever colors I wanted. I could even change the background color too but I like this simple layout.

Along with their 40 different envelope colors, free address uploading service, and the pretty, pretty designs, Basic Invite’s custom features make this site stand out among all the other online stationery services. If you are having a baby or a grandchild anytime soon, bookmark this site and start playing with some designs! (Also please tell me about it – I only get my baby fixes in with other people’s babies now! I love to smell new baby heads. It’s one of the most delicious smells on Earth.)

Lucky you, there’s a promotion on birth announcements running now, too. Use the code BIRTH40 to get 40% off these unique birth announcements at Basic Invite! (You don’t have to send me one, but I sure would be delighted.)

Thank you to Basic Invite for sponsoring this post. All opinions, and a sudden strong urge to hold and smell a baby, are my own.

Go Back To Printed With Minted

The trend toward e-Christmas cards makes me sad. I love sending and receiving real cards, and this year I’m making mine using minted.

mint christmas cardYou can purchase this design here

I’ve sent actual physical Christmas cards to friends and family since…maybe since I graduated from college? Certainly long before my children were born. It’s way more fun now that I have them as photo shoot accessories, though. I’ve never been tempted to switch to e-Christmas cards, which is certainly easier, cheaper, and faster. But there is something about the ritual of creating the perfect card, addressing the envelope, and checking off the list that helps usher in the holiday season.

Ever since my first son was born 9 years ago, Christmas has been much more fun in general, starting with holiday photo cards. I have a friend who used to keep a special album of holiday photo cards she received from people. She said it was neat to flip through it and watch the children multiply and grow through holiday greetings over the years.

Now that I’ve been doing photo cards for 9 years, I can do that with just my own little family.

One year I sent out a card with several pictures taken throughout the year on the front with the requisite “Happy Holidays” greeting, and on the back, in a small thumbnail photo spot, I included an outtake from one of the “Kodak moments.” We were at Disneyland and the kids were fidgeting and it was kind of rainy – it was a miracle they posed at all that day. But the shot was hilarious, and a lot people who received that card that year commented that that was the part they loved the most about it.

disney outtake“The magic is in the outtakes,” the caption read.

So this year, why not try a reversal?

What if I do a holiday card photo shoot and on the card itself, just include the outtakes on the front? And maybe the “real” photo on the back?

Minted has a lot of lovely designs that will help me make this happen, and a handy filter that lets me sort by number of photos (lately I have favored one big photo with writing along the bottom but that won’t work for an outtake spread), color palette, shape, size, type of paper, etc.  Like other online photo card design tools, minted lets you play around with the different templates. Minted’s tool is easy to use and if my computer is not too tired it refreshes quickly.

There are SO MANY possibilities I am having a hard time choosing. Look, I even made a sample:

FRONT

mint test christmas card frontRelax. This is just a test. In fact, that is what I am doing in this photo. Relaxing.

BACK

mint test christmas card back

It will most likely come down to what we decide to wear for the shoot and our location. Last year it was the top of a hill on one of the trails at Chesebro Canyon. Not sure what we will pick this year. (And in case you think I’ve gone fancy, the “shoot” consists of our family, my mom and dad, and lots of me threatening the children with serious consequences if they don’t quit whining and smile, dammit.)

Printed photo cards have really come a long way. They don’t have to look cheap or cheesy. Minted prints everything on high quality paper, and you can even choose a small photo book with little stories about your family from the whole year.

Stay tuned to see what we picked. I say “we” to be inclusive but let’s be honest. Mama does all the work here.

I received credit at minted to facilitate this two-part feature.