Throwing a child’s birthday party is always so much more fun and exciting than throwing one for an adult! (Unless maybe it’s an Over-The-Hill party)  There are no rules when it comes to kid’s parties!  The sky is the limit, and you can let your creativity shine!  Children’s birthday parties always have some sort of fun theme; from the Circus to Sports, Science, their favorite cartoon character, or something as simple as crayons.

These are all the exact reasons why I love designing for children’s parties!  Whether it be invitations, or decorations like banners, these sorts of projects give me an opportunity to be a kid again.  I can brush the cobwebs off of my pigtails and throw my big girl pants and adult tendencies to the wind!

I have been crafting, coloring, cutting and pasting for as long as I can remember.  I still love coloring books and crayons.  There is something comforting about coloring inside the lines with all the wrong colors, or scribbling all over the page and just not care!  Speaking of crayons, my most recent trip down memory lane was for a crayon birthday invitation for a very special little boy’s 2nd birthday!

I was so excited when I was presented with this idea.  There are so many ways that the theme of crayons could be approached, especially from a child’s perspective, and I was immediately ready to get started.  So I did what I sometimes do when I need a little creative inspiration, or a place to start… I googled it.  Say what you will about how professional that makes me, but there’s something about the flood of images on a certain topic from the perspective of millions of people that seems to be a natural designer’s resource to me.

I found a very simple photograph of the front of a Crayola box of crayons, moved it into Adobe Illustrator and got to work.  There is something so comforting about Crayola, so instantly recognizable, even without the logo.  The two-toned green triangles at the bottom corners, the dark green simple, bold font, golden yellow box, and scooped font are iconic, and are the elements I wanted to transfer to this crayon birthday invitation.

Being the typography enthusiast (nerd) that I am, I again googled what font was used here (which I could have figured out with some trial and error but I assumed a logo as iconic as this would be easy to track down) and found that Futura was the typeface I needed.

Step by step I created a graphic likeness of the familiar box of crayons that is so comforting to every one of us.  This is where the fun comes in, personalization.  I used Futura to replace the Crayola logo with the name, SPENCER.  I found a font online that looks like it was drawn with crayons, which I love, and used that to change the number on the box of crayons that normally represents how many are in it, to the age he is turning.

It was so much fun to play with the different attributes of a simple box of crayons and remake them to fit this purpose; a birthday party invitation.  For display purposes, I sometimes make generalized versions of my invitations so that you can imagine what your child’s name or home address would look like.

There were a few variations on the crayon birthday invitation; more crayons, fewer crayons, some in the box, some out of the box… but the end result was perfect.

Matched with an adorable natural brown paper envelope and rounded edges, I received my copy of the crayon birthday invitation in the mail and was so very happy with how it came out!  [See the photos from the Crafty Themed Kid’s Party!]