Waves of uselessness, please help

[brixtonbrood]

Dear all,

I have a huge list of stuff to do by the end of the week, and near the top is to send out invites to Tiny's 4th birthday party before school breaks up.

I do not want to spend the time hand writing in the details on every invite, but my graphic design is too feeble to knock something nice up in Word or whatever. I assumed in the past that the Internet would provide, but what it provides is endless pdf files which it then tells you to write the details in by hand - what's the bloody use of that?

Last time I checked there was precisely one basic Word-type design available on the whole interweb, and I used it for two years on the trot, but it's distinctly girly, and indeed crap.

What can I do that's quick and reasonably attractive? (it doesn't need to have any sort of wow factor - Tiny doesn't care)

Or how can I edit the infinite number of pdf files, armed only with a computer with Vista and Office, and a colour printer/scanner?

Comments

[bugshaw.livejournal.com]

Get Tiny to draw a design and scan it in?

[smallbeasts.livejournal.com]

Ellie made a multi-tiered cake in paint using the rectangle tool, then coloured it with the spray tool. You could try something similar, and if it comes out badly you can claim the kids did it themselves.

[jackfirecat.livejournal.com]

Can't help really other than to nit pick re the hand-written such a slog. How many are there?

(Although I do appreciate that if you do find a mail-merge type mechanism to do this by, it will come in useful next year too. Having built an Access Database of Tiny's friends, natch. Direct marketing at home.)

[brixtonbrood.livejournal.com]

I wasn't actually thinking of automating the names of little friends, just the date, time, address and RSVP contact details - all of which are tedious to write on N cards.

[jackfirecat.livejournal.com]

didn't mean to sound as sarky as that was, but was amused by idea of a little friends database, forgive me.

Yrs, Still no help re original question, etc

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

How about this:

* choose one of the PDF ones that you like;

* print out one copy of it, and hand-write in the common details;

* scan that;

* then print off N copies of the scan, each now looking (if your scanner and printer are suitably good) as though they've been lovingly hand-written.

[brixtonbrood.livejournal.com]

Yes, that was the logical answer that my uselessness was preventing me from seeing, thank you - I'm not used to having a scanner.

In the end actually a more concerted Google found me a more user friendly template.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Good good!

[truecatachresis.livejournal.com]

I have not used the following (although I have used something similar in the past), but you could try something like http://www.pdfhammer.com/ as a quick and easy option. Alternatively, there are quite a few options that come up under a Google search for free pdf editor - but, again, I haven't used any of them.