Blur but beautful - DIY idea for party invites using mosaics

It's been a while since I shared any craft-related post.

That's the thing about art and craft - one moment the inspiration rushes to your head and you can't stop the creativity juice from flowing; the next moment your mind is in a blank and rather than forcing yourself to do something for the sake of doing it, you'd rather wait till the inspiration hits again.

So that every piece of craft becomes a masterpiece. 

Fine, I'm by far not an artist or professional crafter, but at least I try to keep on finding my inspiration.

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Today I'm gonna share some ideas about DIY invitation cards. 

If you have hosted a party before, you probably know that it takes time to produce the invites, more so if you want to hand make each of them yourself so as to add that personal touch.

Trust me, I know it takes time. 

I never did believe in buying party invites for they look boring, generic and so un-personalised in my point of view. Even if you take time to write the name of every guest, well, your card is after all bought and so many people out there receive a similar one so there's nothing special about yours.

So, I make it a point to DIY my own invites, be it for my ROM wedding ceremony or Angel's birthday party. Though it takes time and effort, I believe the reward makes it worthwhile.

If you wish to make your own invites but yet not spend an overly amount of time on the design, this is the perfect tutorial for you.

Introducing to you the beauty of photographic mosaics - which is basically an image made up of many smaller, tiled photos.

Some people might not notice the mosaic at first glance but when they do, you bet they will be in awe and appreciate the hard work behind.

But is it hard? Well, not at all.

These were the party invites for Angel's first birthday party. I did photographic collages using my favourite pictures of her and stuck them onto the front of the card along with a floral/heart embellishment. For the back, it had the usual date, time, venue, theme, guest's name and a birthday quote.

For my ROM, it was a beach-themed wedding and I did a black and white mosaic just to give it that classic, romantic feel. I did 4 different covers for the cards using beautiful beach pictures. Guess how many of the cards I made? Well, just over 100. Drew, cut, pasted, wrote and sealed in envelopes all by myself. I really felt so proud when I deposited them at the post office. Read more about the making of L'amour Voyage.

So, how do you create a mosaic?

First, you have to download a photographic mosaic software. I personally used AndreaMosaic which can be downloaded at the link. 

I would recommend it for the below reasons:

• It's free to download. You can pay to upgrade to the professional version but frankly speaking, the cost-free, standard version does wonders and is more than good enough for personal use.
• It offers tutorials and user manuals for the beginners
• There is no time limit to this software
• It is easy to navigate and simple to use

To begin, you have to upload a picture which will be used as your final image. You can change the Size parameters to determine the size of your mosaic, the resolution and the number of tiles it will consist of. The more tiles you use, the sharper your final image will be.

In Tile duplication, you can select whether you want to repeat the same tile (if so, how many times) and the spacing between the repeated tiles.

The tiles don't have to look boring or have the same size, under Pattern, you have the option to select standard, portrait, parquet or mixed patterns and add a twist to the final look.

Colour change allows you the select the percentage by which your tiles' colour can be altered. The higher the percentage, the easier it will be to fit the tiles and give the highest resemblance to your final image.

In Tile variant, you can also decide whether to allow the tiles to be rotated, mirrored or flipped vertically when creating the mosaic.

Next, you have to select the tiles to be uploaded. You can either add a folder from your computer or extract tiles from a video. Remember to save your archives.

Finally, just click on Create Mosaic, wait for it to generate and ta-dah, you have created your very own photographic mosaic! Feel free to play around with it till you achieve your desired final look.

The beauty of this photographic mosaic is that not only can you use it for cards, you can also print and frame it up in your house, use it as your computer wallpaper or stick it onto your fridge so that you can always look at those happy pictures and be reminded of those happy moments.

I hope you'll have as much fun as I did!

Sometimes, the prettiest things in life can be blur but yet their beauty prevails. 

For more craft ideas and DIY tutorials, visit my gallery here.

*Disclosure: A Happy Mum did not receive any compensation in writing this review. All opinions are my own.