Where do you buy your invitations?
One day, I was shopping at Michaels when I saw a woman with her young son stop an employee to ask if the store carried birthday invitations.
“No, just wedding invitations,” he replied and kept on walking.
That surprised me. A craft store doesn’t carry birthday invitations? I guess they want you to just buy the materials to make your own. That could be fun if you have the time, but planning a party is time-consuming enough without having to design, create/print, and mail your homemade invitations.
Save the date
The more I thought about it, the more I realized that you don’t see too many invitation options in the party sections of brick and mortar stores anymore. You’re lucky to find a few packs featuring generic balloon and streamer designs printed on flimsy paper at the dollar store. Or maybe a few superhero or Disney princess-themed invitations at Walmart.
But graduation is a special occasion that requires mailing out quality invitations that won’t get damaged in the mail, ones that feature your school colors and gives you another use for the senior pictures that you spent good money on. You only get to graduate once. Why not go all out?
About Basic Invite
Incidentally, you have to go online in order to find quality paper invitations these days. Basic Invite is an online invitation store where customers can design and order custom invitations for any holiday, milestone, or event. With over 180 different color options for each design, you can preview each color before you purchase it so that you can match it perfectly with your theme colors.
My high school’s colors were black and gold. The right shade of gold can be a hard color to find, and you end up settling for yellow when it comes to buying decorations. Using Basic Invite keeps you from having to settle for a close but essentially wrong color in your graduation invitations. You’re not going to find that level of variety just anywhere.
Free printed invitation samples
But how do you know that the gold that you see on your computer screen is the same shade of gold that will show up in the printed product? On Basic Invite, you can request a printed sample of your design before you order. Once a hard copy is in your hand, you decide if the colors match your expectations, the paper is the right thickness and texture, and the overall design is to your satisfaction. If not, you can tweak whatever elements you want before placing your order.
This is especially important when it comes to making your paper selection. As a self-published author, I struggled to find the right matte or gloss for my printed book covers. It was a trial-and-error process of ordering several books in various styles in order to find the one I liked best. Had I been given a hard copy sample to review, it would have saved me a lot of time, money, and frustration.
Foil cards
If you really want those metallic colors to pop, check out their foil cards. Foil colors are available in gold, silver, and rose gold and can be raised or flat. This definitely adds an eye-catching element to the design without looking cheap or tacky.
What I love about creating designs online is the ability to play around with different techniques without having to create the design from scratch. You see an instant preview of your design in just a few clicks. So, you can click back and forth between the gold and rose gold options until you figure out which one you like best.
Envelope color choices
Also, you know that store bought cards typically come with plain, see-through, white envelopes and hardly ever close once you lick them shut. I’m always wrestling with tape and stickers to make sure my envelopes close. That’s fine if you’re just mailing in a check for a bill or sending a Christmas card, but for these once in a lifetime events, you’d like a better presentation than that. Basic Invite has over 40 envelope colors to choose from.
Every envelope is peel and seal. So, you’re not forced to lick each card before sealing it. Peel and seal always works. It saves you from spreading germs, paper cuts on your tongue, and the moisture doesn’t bleed through and stick to the other envelopes when you stack them up to throw them in the mailbox.
Free address printing
Next comes the hard part: gathering addresses. The next thing you know, you’re tearing your junk drawers apart, looking for old Christmas card envelopes so that you can double check the spelling of your great-aunt’s street name. And even though your best friend lives just four blocks away, you’ve never bothered to memorize his house number.
Basic Invite has a tool which allows you to send out an online request for mailing addresses via any social media site, including Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Here, your friends and family are asked to reply with their mailing addresses which are then stored in your Basic Invite account and can be selected during the design process. The addresses are then printed at no additional cost.
Basic Invite’s website
When I checked out Basic Invite’s website, I was impressed with their simple navigation and clean layout. I love how their site banner is organized by the types of products they offer as well as their most popular invitation events of the season with a dropdown listing all of the holidays and occasions you can think of.
It’s also nice to scroll through and mark your favorite designs so that you can come back to them later. As someone who needs to see every option before I make any choice in this life, I like having the ability to view a condensed list instead of scrolling back through the entire list to revisit a previous design. This saves a lot of time for those of us who are terrible at making decisions.
Another thing I like is that the prices are printed at the bottom of every card preview before you even start designing, and certain options, such as specific paper types, include the additional cost when you select them from the dropdowns. You don’t have to spend time designing a card only to start over again when you discover that it’s out of your price range.
The website does everything for you, and you get to play exclusively with the creative aspects of the design process without stressing over whether they’re going to print out clearly, the borders will get cut off, or the thick paper will get caught in your printer. All of your invited guests will receive a quality invitation with an eye-catching design and professionally-printed address with an accurate color scheme and a quality design which reflects the importance of this upcoming event.
Other products and a discount offer
Additionally, Basic Insight also sells stationary and business cards and will create free websites for wedding and birthday events. I love the idea of being able to order stationary that matches your event invites. It saves another trip to the store to hunt down thank you cards to send out to your guests after the event is over.
Right now, Basic Invite is offering 15% off with coupon code: 15FF51
Check out the links to their graduation invite options and social media sites below, and take advantage of this offer! If you place an order, leave a comment below, and let me know about your experience using Basic Invite.
Basic Invite’s Graduation Invitation Links:
invitations templates for graduation
graduation party invitations with photos
Check out Basic Invite on Social Media:
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They’re really pretty. I like the foil cards. I have thought about getting the foil ones myself and the coloured envelopes are a nice touch
Thanks for checking them out! Yes, the foil cards are really nice. It really helps the font to stand out.
I really like the foil invites, they are so pretty. I’d never heard of some of these thankyou for the insight and info. Great post x
Thanks! They’re a good resource to keep in mind for Christmas cards, invites, stationary, etc.
I love this post! It’s so informative and really entertaining to read. Thanks for sharing I learned a lot.
Thanks! They are a good company to work with.
These are really pretty, much cooler than the invitations I had way back when! The styles have definitely changed. I like that they incorporate photos.
Definitely a lot more detailed and convenient.
They are some great ideas, they are so pretty! I like sending out invitations and receiving them, can save them and scrapbook them too. Thank you for sharing x
The free sample is an awesome touch so you know that everything will be right!
I never even knew that graduation parties were a thing! But then I graduated in absentia because I was too overwhelmed at the busyness and schedule of graduation day.
I think that skipping graduation is pretty common, but regardless of whether or not you go to commencement, to graduate from high school is definitely worth celebrating. 🙂