Eco Child’s Play

I don’t know how or when it happened, but kids’ birthdays somehow seem to be an open invitation for non-stop excess. I consider myself an environmentalist, for instance, and yet for the past few years I’ve made a shopping trip every summer specifically for paper plates and napkins and plastic cups just for my children’s birthday party. The plates are biodegradable and the napkins are compostable, sure, and we do shrink plastic projects with the cups after we wash them, but still—yikes! And consider that just one example of the horrors that birthday party planning can wreak upon a heretofore budget-minded, eco-friendly family.

This year we’re trying for a more eco-friendly, as well as less expensive, birthday celebration. And we’re starting with the invitations—DIY, kid-created from recycled materials or from stash, and reflective of the simple and casual affair that we’re hoping to host this year.

If you’re in need of your own birthday party invitations or invitations to anything, here are some good ideas for simple, DIY invites you and your kids can create for yourselves:

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• Use an old salad spinner and some cardstock to create spin art postcards with your party information and recipient’s address on the flip side.
• Originally found via Craftzine, these printable affirmation cards from Kind over Matter have the virtue of being round, a good shape for backing with cardboard beer coasters, or cannister lids, or even with the previously mentioned spin art or a Spirograph decoration. I’ve heard you can mail anything as long as you’ve got a stamp on it, but I’d probably hand-deliver weirdly shaped invitations, myself.
• Kids love stickers! We use sticker paper for our home printer to make homemade stickers, but to avoid the expense and the ridiculous amount of packaging of a package of sticker paper, Our Big Earth makes homemade stickers using gelatin and waxed paper for the glue and backing. Of course, then you get into the problem that I don’t use gelatin, but imagine the possibilities if you do! You could use your own recycled or vintage papers with beautiful images as background for your party information.
• For a set of invitations that comes together assembly-line style, consider this tutorial for creating your own stencils from Balzer Designs. Any random blank card or postcard will pop with personality when it sports a kid-designed birthday cake, or a parent-designed superhero logo.
• This project from Design Sponge for a postcard journal could be very easily modified into a postcard greeting card or birthday invitation–why do I have so many random postcards? Does this happen to everybody?

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