My second post for today. I have a variety of Christmas cards made – I didn’t end up making a bunch of just one design because I have made so many over the last couple of months I decided to just use the ones I already have made. If I run short then I’ll make something else. The problem is that we like to include a photo and I didn’t have a good family photo of all 5 of us. So I decided to try using MDS to create a “photo” for my hand made cards. I also wanted to print it locally so that I can pick it up today or tomorrow. I had everything made in MDS and was about to select the button to print copies of my photo and decided to do a preview – oh no – part of my beautiful creation was getting cut off….
So this is what happens – in the Stampin’ Up! My Digital Studio software I selected to create a card – I selected to create a 5-1/2 x 4-1/4 size card – but when I went to upload and get it printed the choices for printing a photo are 4 x 6 – so it was cutting off part of my card in order to fit into the size that the photo prints. My solution this time was to pull up my card into my photo editing software and then change the aspect ratio to be a 4 x 6 photo – this added white space on one end of my photo. I saved that and will print it with the white space which I will then cut off once I get them home. Now they will fit inside my 5-1/2 x 4-1/4 cards that I created.
This is what I created using the My Digital Studio. Here are some basics steps on how to do this:
1. Open MDS and choose Greeting Card as the project type.
2. Choose 4-1/4″ x 5-1/2″ Portrait.
3. Choose a Designer template.
4. Choose Christmas Jingle – 4.25 x 5.5 – card 3.
5. For the Page Arrangement – just click Next – I only created one page.
6. Choose Pick and Click – Insert Photos Individually.
7. Give your project a name and click FINISH. MDS will create the card you selected.
8. I removed the embellishments and greeting by clicking on each one and hit the DELETE key.
9. I moved the Chocolate Chip strip over to the left to about the 2-1/2″ mark.
10. I enlarged the Old Olive area towards the left to meet the Chocolate Chip strip and to the right to the end of the bleed area.
11. I added a photo box – creating about 1-1/2″ square. I copied this photo box four times so that all my photo boxes would be the same size. I moved each box into position and turned on the GRID and SNAP TO GRID to help align them. The top box I enlarged to be the width of the two lower boxes.
12. I added the photos to each box. I used the ZOOM IN tool and CROP tool to adjust my photos. I also added a thin white mat around all the photos on the page.
13. I added a STAMP from Season of Cheer, rotated it 90 degrees and changed the ink color to white. I positioned this in the Old Olive area next to my photos.
14. I added several text boxes. One at the bottom has our name and the year – the text is white. The others are also white text and put on top of the photos, I rotated them on each photo to position them where I wanted.
Once the project is complete you can CHECK PROJECT – I checked the page for errors – there were none.
Then you can SHARE PROJECT. From here I exported mine to a .jpg file. And then used my photo edit software to resize it to be a 4×6 so I could print it as a photo.
Maybe you can try creating something like this in MDS also. My sister-in-law created her Christmas Letter using MDS – she create an 8-1/2 x 11 scrapbook page that she printed on her computer at home on nice paper. Then she bought envelopes and put them in the mail. I got mine a day or two ago.
One more family related item – we got a phone call yesterday from Kennesaw State University – this is where Kyle is going to school for his senior year of high school as a Joint Enrollment student (he gets both high school and college credit at the same time) – anyway they were calling to tell him he won the award for Outstanding Student from all of the Joint Enrollment students that attended. The award was for the student with the highest GPA and the most credit hours. We are very proud. He also had straight A’s and is on the President’s List (that is a 4.0 GPA). He’ll be invited to an awards ceremony in April along with the Outstanding Students from all the other majors at the university. Can you tell I’m a proud mom?
Have a great day!
