April has finally arrived and it's time to think about all the fun events spring has in store. We've added new spring patterns to our envelope liner collection to help make all your projects more festive. Make Mother’s Day extra special by hosting a tea party. Create all-occasion gift enclosures to have on hand when you’re gift-giving. New digs? Let everyone know with spring-y moving announcements. And since we’re nearing wedding season, that must mean it’s also nearing anniversary time. Celebrate with a formal dinner party.

Tea for two... or twenty
We channeled our flower power into sweet and feminine Mother’s Day tea party invitations. Whether you want to celebrate with just a few generations of moms in your family, or invite all the ladies in your life, a tea party is a wonderful way to spend girl time.

Our PrintingPress invitation is uber-femme with two dainty daisy-clad tea cups atop a white A2 Scalloped flat card. We printed the invitation text in green using the Sky Pie font and tucked the card into a Clover envelope lined with the new dotty daisies (pink and green) liner.

The Platinum invitation uses a background image that has a variety of simple, bold flowers in green and pink. We added text in Benjamin Caps from Fonts & Graphics for Weddings in pink and green as well to make every word pop. The White card is paired with our new A7 Magenta envelope lined with the new giant flowers (pink & green) liner.

For a more sophisticated invitation, we added floating blue and brown tropical flowers to our Extreme invitation on A6 Blueberry Truffle stationery. The text is a mixture of Alyssa Afternoon and Benjamin Caps from Fonts & Graphics for Weddings. Extra spacing was added to the block font for a letterpress look using the Increase Horizontal Spacing button in the Text toolbar. We used a floating text box to shape the RSVP in a quarter circle around a flower in the bottom right corner of the card. The Chocolate envelope is lined with the new petals (blue & brown) liner.

On the move
There are so many details to keep track of when you move, it’s easy to forget moving announcements. But our announcements are so easy you’ll be able to notify your friends and family of your new contact information in high style in a snap.

PrintingPress users can print on our new Strawberry Truffle A7 Front-Scalloped Two-Tone stationery. We printed some simple brown flowers on a 4-Bar Scalloped Pink card and then added the new address and phone number using the youthful Charlotte font from Fonts & Graphics 3. Then we adhered the pink card to the center of the A7 Chocolate card. Pair with an A7 Chocolate envelope lined with the new giant flowers (brown, pink & green) liners.

The Platinum moving announcement uses a striking tropical floral border around a White A2 Scalloped flat card. We set the margins to 1.25 inches to keep the text, in the Meegles font from Fonts & Graphics 3, from overlapping the border. Pair the card with an A2 Blush envelope with a pink liner.

Show the skyline of your new city with the Extreme moving announcement. We shaped the top text into a wave to touch the building tops. We put a new address in the Ryan font from Fonts & Graphics 3 and set it to justify vertically, so the space between each line is equal. For its sparse, modern style, we added space between the letters and words with the Increase Horizontal Spacing button in the Text toolbar. Print on A2 Rock Candy stationery with mod squad (blue & green) liners.

PrintingPress sample
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PrintingPress Platinum sample
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PrintingPress Extreme sample
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A golden anniversary
A 50th anniversary is a momentous occasion worthy of a special dinner, so invite the whole family to celebrate and go the extra step to make a collection of matching invitations, menus and place cards.

Our PrintingPress invitation uses a decorative tile in the top center of an Ivory A7 Scalloped card. Our new floral tile (blue & green) envelope liner inside an A7 Dusty Blue envelope will create a coordinated invitation. A scalloped menu with the same motif and a scalloped place card using the same Alyssa and Benjamin Caps fonts from Fonts & Graphics for Weddings as the invitation will tie all the pieces together.

The Platinum invitation is printed on the top layer of A6 Two Tone stationery in White and Teal. The invitation layers the happy couple’s monogram over a striped band at the top of the card. We used borderless printing to make the colors go to the edge of the card. See the November 2004 Tech Tip for more information. We used full justification on the teal Benjamin text from Fonts & Graphics 2 so it lines up evenly on the right and left sides. The menu and place card use the same striped band and even though they’re not standard photo sizes, we still used borderless printing by fooling the printer into thinking they are the closest standard photo size to their actual size. When printing, we set the printer’s paper size to 3.5 x 5 inches for the place card and 4 x 6 inches for the menu.

Our Extreme invitation adds a solid brown base to Blueberry Truffle A7 stationery. The anniversary couple’s name is written in white in the Beckles Wide font which will appear blue when printed on the blue card. All the text in this project is given an airy style by increasing the space between the letters with the Increase Horizontal Spacing button in the Text toolbar. The menu follows a very similar design to the invitation but rotates the card 90 degrees, and both are printed using borderless printing. We repeated the same font and blue cocktail glasses on the place card to tie the design together. We used our new polka dots (light blue) envelope liner inside the Chocolate A7 envelope to complete the look. All of our new light blue liners are designed to coordinate with our Blueberry Truffle stationery.

Is the border half empty or half full?
Sometimes you just don’t want to have it all. PrintingPress Extreme makes it easy for you to create just a stripe at the top and bottom or left and right of your card rather than a full border all the way around your card.

First add your border to the stationery by choosing Stationery Border, Add Border in the Design menu. Choose Custom in the Border type section and the controls in the Custom border details section will become enabled. Specify a Fill width for your border, and choose a color or pattern for the fill and any outline color and width you like. In our Gift Enclosure example, we created a 0.5 inches fill width for our custom pattern border.

In order to have only the top and bottom parts of the border show (and not the left and right sides), the left margin was set to -0.5 inches so the sides don't appear at all. In our example we set the top margin to zero to lay flush against the top and bottom of the card. Click OK and you'll have two strips at the top and bottom of the card. To have strips at the side, set the left margin to zero and the top margin to -0.5 inches. Voilá!