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I remember the first birthday card I received that was designed on a home PC and printed out on a colour inkjet printer. It was made by a friend’s children, and I was impressed. Long before that I was printing out cards for my aunts on a dot matrix printer in black and white (well smudgy grey and white, really). Now, we’ve come to expect far more from our friends than a folded piece of paper shoved through the colour laser. We expect a store-bought card at the very least!
But that doesn’t mean you need to turn your loyal PC off for the winter (or summer, down south) and haul out the savings to pay for expensive cards and wrapping. Use your PC to kickstart professional looking designs. Just don’t stop there – put your craftwork apron back on and get ready to write “lovingly handmade by” again.
Strike a balance between the stark structure of computerised images and fonts, and warm imperfections of handmade articles. These ideas are perfect for keeping the kids busy. They won’t even realise they’re not really using the PC. And you never know, they may even enjoy getting their hands dirty.
End of Year Family Newsletters
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Printed, mass-mailed newsletters are still popular, especially with writers who use the opportunity to reflect on the past year and share their words with friends and family. Why not download some new festive season borders or graphics from the Internet to add to your newsletter? Type “Free Images” followed by “Festive” or “Christmas” or “Hannukah" into a search engine, or search the Microsoft® ClipArt database by clicking on the weblink on the ClipArt Tool in MS Word. (Remember to respect the rights of the copyright owner – if they don’t state on their website that you can download and use their images, then don’t.)
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If many of your friends and family are online, save trees and send an email newsletter. Add animated images to your newsletter to jazz it up – these perform a looped animated sequence in the email program. Most small animation files have a “.gif” extension, so look out for these when you’re searching for images.
Create festive templates
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Once you’ve found some good images online, print off a bold or stylised graphic and stick it onto cardboard. Cut around it to create a template, or cut it out of the board to create a stencil. Experiment with keeping inner sections of the image intact and joined to the edges for more detail.
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Remember the potato stamps you used to make in junior school art class? If you prefer, you can use foam or polystyrene packing material. Cut a potato in half and draw around your template to make an indentation on the potato. Cut away the edges and use as a stamp.
Run Out of Wrapping Paper?
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Create your own personalised paper by composing a festive poem or, better still, an ode to the recipient. Type your poem and change the font to a cursive style. Increase the font size to at least 50, so that your poem will be legible. Print and cut out the lettering to create a stencil. Unroll a length of brown paper (or coloured paper) and stencil your poem continuously in gold or silver paint. Intersperse with a stamped or stencilled graphic. Search for new fonts on the Internet, by typing “Free fonts” into a search engine.
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Raid your sewing kit for off-cuts of broad fabric ribbon. Use metallic acrylic or fabric paints to stamp or stencil small graphics onto the ribbon.
Have fun!
copyright © Elsa Neal 2004 (Please contact the
for permission to reprint this article.)
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