Preparing birthday invitations for yourself or for someone else can be pretty challenging. You may think it's easy, but once you're in front of the drawing-board (or the personal computer - which is quite often the case), you'll find that you are a bit strapped for ideas. This is actually why people are willing to pay good money for other people to design and print their birthday invitations: the conceptualization is the hardest part!

A birthday invitation should be attractive; it should impress and entice people into sending in their RSVPs. A simple card bearing the details of the paty, with a big birthday cake graphic on the front, does not guarantee an impressed or enticed audience. Here are some tips that would let you breathe a bit of color into your birthday invitations:

1. Humor is a good attractor. Don't want a boring card? Crack a joke or two! Make up a witty passage (a limerick would be even better!), or else find one off the Internet. You must be careful to pick a quote that isn't potentially offensive!

2. Make smart use of color. Color is always handy for catching attention. The rule isn't always "the more colorful, the better," although in some cases it is. Cards that are just bursting with color promise fun and excitement. A card for a children's birthday party would be most effective if it looked festive.

But if you are making birthday invitations for older people, you can still make elegant designs out of monochrome. It would be a great ink-saver, too! Sepia is a popular color to use for birthday celebrants who are somewhat advanced in age; sepia photos and borders would make up a great formal invitation... although it may seem a trifle gloomy to some. Most birthday gatherings are supposed to be relaxing and/or fun! So try to jazz up the design a bit so the monochrome does not look too old-school.

3. Include a picture of the celebrant. This is a traditional touch, forgotten when people are so busy thinking about funky designs. A picture of the celebrant may even take care of the conceptualization for you! Once you have it placed on the front of the invitation, you could think of a way to spice up the space around it - like making a colorful background or an elegant border around the picture. When making birthday invitations, you should work out a design that best suits the celebrant's personality.