Guest post at Hostess With The Mostess

A party idea with a downloadable, customizable invitation awaits you over at Hostess With The Mostess. Browse the recipe section over there, too. Yum. I want to make everything.

Download free labels

Update: The link to Yasmine's labels no longer works. You can download printable matryoshka labels and to-do list sheets from Yasmine at A Print a Day. Mighty generous of her to make these for us.

Printable bookplates

Download and print some bookplates for the little ones, created generously by Emily Martin and available for free at CraftSanity. Click here and scroll down a bit to fetch the PDF.

Make notes to self

Thank you, Patricia Zapata, for these lovely to-do list sheets. Since these are my favorite colors, I'm just going to go ahead and pretend you made them for me. Even though you didn't. Downloadable right here by clicking the last link.

Printable recipe cards

Julianna Smith, a Portland-based illustrator, has designed a couple of free recipe cards you can download. Get them here.

Little paper Hermès purse

For those of us who don't want to spend our life's savings on a real Hermès bag, there's a customizable, downloadable paper model on their site. (Find the picture there that looks like the one above and click it.) I guess this little bag could sit on your desk and hold a jellybean or something. Thanks, Tsh.

P.S. If you poke around the Hermès wonderland some more, you can find lots of nifty animations, games, and videos.

Fold a US candidate

Can't remember where I came across this, but I think it's hilarious. You can download and fold your own US presidential candidate.

Children's book illustration tags

Download a PDF of printable tags featuring vintage children's book illustrations from doe-c-doe.

Wee Valentine's boxes

Emily of Orange Beautiful designed a downloadable, printable template for little Valentine's Day dice you can fill with candy. Get the template here, at Daily Candy (appropriately).

Printable Chinese New Year decorations

Chinese New Year is tomorrow, Feb. 7. In preparation for your party, print some paper lantern votive holders, door decorations, 3D zodiac animals, and more from HP's Chinese New Year downloads section.

Simple notecard with buttons

I stole some cute buttons from my mom's stash and repurposed them here. If you want to make this easy notecard, download the PDF template and print it out. (Each sheet makes two cards.) Cut the sheet in half and fold the two cards. Attach some colorful buttons with hot glue and round the card's corners if you want. This could make a quick and easy Valentine, especially if you use red and pink buttons.

Make little paper buildings

Look at this website! You can download tons of papercraft models for little dollhouses and shops and all the furnishings that go in them. I would have loved this when I was a kid. (Okay. Who am I kidding. I still love it.) The food models are cute, too, especially the paper sushi. Via Papercraft World.

(Images from Paper Museum)

Make a lucky paper cat

I kind of want to make this Japanese cat to go with my paper bamboo, but I think it might be too much work. If you want to give it a go, here's the downloadable, printable template.

(Image from Canon)

Free printable desk calendar

Need a 2008 desk calendar? Download and print these sheets compliments of Blueprint magazine. Detach the front cover of an ordinary CD jewel case, put it on backwards, and insert the calendar pages. (Note a commenter there said the pages need to be reduced 85% to fit the case, so you might want to do a test before printing all of them.)

(Image from marthastewart.com)

Download a free self-mailing notecard

Evie of evie s. emailed me about her self-mailer you can download, print, and send to a friend. The design is perfect for the holidays. Download it here!

Tree greeting card download

Here's another greeting card I made, which you can download here and print, if you like. A chocolate brown envelope might be nice with it. If you don't have one, you can make one out of brown paper using this template.

Baby shower downloads

It seems to be peak season for baby showers around here. I guess everybody had a good time on their Christmas vacations last year! Anyhow, while browsing around Nested, I found some nice-looking free downloads. You can get bookplates, in case you're throwing a children's book shower where every guest brings their favorite childhood book. Or if you need shower game ideas, get some lovely looking printable game cards. Happy shower-throwing!

Make envelopes out of patterned paper

Here's a blank envelope template you can download. (Either print it on plain cardstock to cut out as a template for tracing around, or print it directly on the back of your patterned paper like I did here). Of course, you can also take apart any envelope, flatten it out, and use that as a template, too.

This envelope, after folding, is 5.75 x 4.5 inches. It holds a 5.5 x 4.25 enclosure (a quarter of a letter-sized sheet).

In case of birthday emergency, download and print.

Ever realize that you need a birthday card, but you can't get to the store in time? Here's a printable card and envelope I designed with the vines. I left a lot of white space so it won't use up an entire ink cartridge. If you want, you can download the card PDF and the envelope PDF and print them in the event of a birthday emergency.

A nice gift for that someone special

Husband Alex has been pining away for an iPhone ever since he watched Steve Jobs' demo. Well, they're not out yet, and we can't afford one anyhow, but when Alex came back from his business trip last week, guess what was waiting for him on his desk! Okay, so it's made out of paper. But he can dream...

If you feel the need to make one, download the template here from Creative Techs.