Super Invitations and Save the Dates

I’ve been wanting to show you these Superhero Party Save-the-Dates and invitations I designed for quite some time, but this party was a SUPER-secret, so I had to keep my mouth (blog) shut on the subject until now. This weekend my Sister-in-law threw a huge surprise superhero-themed 30th birthday party for her husband–who is really just a big little boy–and now that there is no secret to keep, I can publicize his love of wearing spandex costumes…and share some party ideas with you. I’ll show you the rest of the party in another post, but I thought these invitations deserved a post of their own.

Since this was a costume party, we sent out Save-the-Dates last October, so that people could have the opportunity to get costumes while they were still in the stores. I started with a photo they had of him in his Captain America costume and extracted it from its background and placed it on top of a stock cityscape. I intensified all of the colors to make it look like a cartoon and added the bubbles “He’ll Save the World! You Save the Date!” And the date of the party.

We included more details on the back-side of the postcard. Trying to make it very clear that this was a secret, but still using lots of fun superhero language.

With such a fun Save-the-Date, we couldn’t let the invitations disappoint, so I created his own Comic Book for the occasion.

I did this much in the same way I did my daughter’s Nancy Drew Book Cover invitations many years ago. I just looked at images of real comic books and copied the elements onto my own design.

The inside was more difficult to put it all together in a form that would look like a comic book, but still give out the important information. Luckily since the birthday boy is such a superhero/comic book fan, we had lots of pictures of him and his family to work with. There are some apps you can buy that transfer your photos into comic book art. I did use these, but tried to find the least dramatic settings so that you could still tell who was in the picture.

I actually used several different programs–and a bit of trial and error–to create this, so I can’t give you a blow by blow. You might try PicMonkey if you want to make something similar. Their collage options and comic bubbles are helpful.

And for the back cover, one more picture in the yellow spandex Wolverine suit, because…hey, he wears a yellow spandex Wolverine suit!

The party was lots of fun and the birthday boy was totally surprised, so I’d say the invitations did the trick! (More party details to come.) Would you be excited to get an invitation like this in the mailbox?

p.s. This took me many hours to put together, so be prepared if you attempt it, and know that if you email me to ask me to make something like this for you, I might have to charge you a small fortune to compensate for my time. #itsgoodtobefamily