Tutorial: How to Add a Cartoon Image to Digital Invitations

Who loves parties??? ME, ME, ME!! I don't just love going to parites but I love planning them even more. Lucky for me I have an itty bitty with a birthday in February and that means the planning has begun!

Back when Boo was about 6 months old, I was already considering party themes [yes I know I am crazy]. I couldn't seem to find one that I loved, but as soon as my older sister said Dr. Suess, I got warm fuzzies. Then came the google-ing and compiling of ideas. In the midst of the research I stumbled upon these super de duper, adorable Cindy Lou Who invites....

Now I chose Dr. Suess because Boo Bear loves Dr. Suess [no joke]. It was the only book she would actually sit through. I think she enjoys the pictures and the rhyming.   Okay and so do I. Even at a month old she was already a Suess lover.  Just look at the concentration on that little face hehehehe.

This post will only be part one.  You can see the finished invite HERE.  Now the biggest part of these invitations is the cartoon Cindy Lou Who. I wish I had a cool program like photoshop to imitate their's, but I don't so I had to work around it.  I saved the image, copied it to word and made it fit the full page [i'll explain why later], turned it black and white, riased the contrast and printed.

I know that already sounds like a lot of work but it only took minutes. If I had time to free hand the picture I would, but I don't so I traced it using a fine point sharpee, hence the need to print the picture. 

Once the tracing was done, I darkened all the lines and tried to match up the weight and thickness of the lines based on the original invitations.

Not to shabby right?   Well, I did mess up on the whites of her eyes and in a few other places but those can be erased in the next step.

Now scan the image onto the computer making the picture quality 300 dpi. The picture is on a full sheet of paper because the larger the actual picture the crisper it looks on the computer. No one wants a grainy picture like the very first one I printed.

If you have a picture editing program you can use that, but because I don't have one on this computer I used picnik.com. Upload the picture, add light by raising the exposure or brightness [until the background is white]. Then adjust the contrast so the ink turns black. I also erased those extra pen marks I accidentally made. See the difference?

Once it is saved, you can copy the image and put it on any program whether it be word, paint, publisher or whatever you have. Download the correct font, choose the right wording, and there you have it!

 Now for me, this isn't finished yet, I still want to add a border and the writing and all of that before I send it to vista print to make the card stock invites. And you can essentially do this with any character, not just Dr. Suess!  I forsee Hello Kitty in the future.