If you’re planning your wedding or another event, you might want to print your own invitations. If you’ve read my blog about The Best Printer for Heavy Cardstock, you know that I love to print my own invitations on my favorite printer. Not only does it help you save money on your event, but it’s fund to DIY and craft for your upcoming special event! However, if you don’t have the printer I suggest, or don’t have a printer that prints borderless prints, you need a workaround! So let’s quickly do the step by step for How to Print Invitations Without a Borderless Printer.
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Below are the quick step by step instructions on How to Print Invitations Without A Borderless Printer, but if you would rather watch a quick tutorial, see the video below.
You can see all my tutorial videos on DIY party decorations here.
The Design: How to Print Invitations Without A Borderless Printer
First things first! You need a great design for your invitation! Whatever event you’re planning – a birthday, a wedding, a baby shower, etc. A perfect design – whatever that means for you! – is a must! You might be designing your own invitations! If so, that’s great. You can use programs on your computer like, Microsoft Word, or my favorite, Adobe Photoshop. However, if that seems like too much work, or you don’t have those programs, you can design an invitation online. Canva, Shutterfly, and Vistaprint, or Prints of Love are all great options for creating your designs, or choosing a design that they’ve already created. You can read Print Invitations Online for more about these online shops for invitations.
Another option is to purchase an invitation from a small online business, like from my shop. This way, you can either get an editable design that you edit yourself as a PDF, or I customize it for you and send you the JPG file to print on your own.
Discover If You Have A Borderless Printer Or Not
Next, we get to the meat of the conversation. The printing. When it comes to printing a JPG or PDF that is 5×7, you would typically want to print this on 5×7 invitation paper. You can check out the paper I recommend for invitations here.
But what happens if your printer doesn’t print borderless? You can check out the specifications for your printer to find out if your printer actually does this, or – if you’re like me – you just do a test! (This is how I learn people!) Just place a 5 x 7 sheet in your printer and print your invitation. Make sure to go into your settings when you print and see if there is a radio button or option to select “borderless print”. If not, try it anyway and see how it comes out. Trial and error, right? How did it go? You realize rather quickly that you don’t have a borderless printer when your invitations don’t go all the way to the edge of the page. This sucks, I get it. But there’s a workaround!
How to Print Invitations Without A Borderless Printer
Here’s the workaround for How to Print Invitations Without A Borderless Printer. Here’s what I like to do:
- Open a blank Word Doc. (You can do this in Google Drive or on your computer using Microsoft Word).
- Go up to “Orientation” and change it to “Landscape” (You know, the “hamburger” way.)
- Go up to “Insert”, “Insert Image”, and select your JPG for your invitation. (visit this Adobe site to covert your PDF to JPG.)
- Right click on your invitation and select “wrap text”, then “In front of Text”.
- Move your invitation to the left side of the page. Then copy and paste your invitation and move the copy right next to the first one on the right hand side, so it’s side by side on the page. (This allows you to print 2 invitations per page.)
- Now you can print!
But wait, what if your invitation doesn’t have clear cut lines on each of the sides. For example, my ball party invitation doesn’t have images on all four sides to clearly mark where you would cut your invitation out. (See below).
How to Print Invitations Without A Borderless Printer When There Aren’t Clear Border Lines
If that is the case, here are some additional steps.
- Go up to “insert”, and grab a rectangle shape.
- Draw the rectangle large enough to cover your invitation (or where there is no border for you to cut).
- Right click on the rectangle and select “move to back”.
- Now you’re ready to print and you can cut along the lines that you made!
Need to know what the best paper is for printing your invitations this way? Read about The Best Paper for Invitations.
Related Articles
You might also be interested in the following articles:
The Best Printer for Invitations
How to Print Printable Party Decorations
Lastly, thank you so much for taking the time to read about How to Print Invitations Without A Borderless Printer. I hope this gives you some ideas about printing your own invitations at home! I love to help you celebrate life through party decorations and personal development! But above all, I’d love to connect with you. Reach out to me on Instagram and let’s chat.
xox
Lindsay
