As you hang up your new calendar, file away old tax receipts and get used to writing “06” on your checks, let Mountaincow help you with your new year’s resolutions. Don’t let old acquaintances be forgotten by using new stationery to stay in touch. Get your lending library in order with stickers to make sure your books find their way back to you. Made a resolution to see friends more often? Start the new year right with a dinner party with these easy and adorable invitations. Get something extra sparkly for a certain ring finger in your stocking? We’ve got Save the Date cards to get your festivities started.

New year, new stationery
Refresh your personalized stationery with new designs in trendy color combinations like the hot new combo of green and brown or one of our favorites, pink and brown.

If you’re a dog lover – especially if you’re a member of the pug club – you’ll love the PrintingPress design printed on Strawberry Truffle A7 cards and folded A2 cards. A little pug pup sits above your name printed in lowercase Jackson Junior Sans Wide.

Platinum users can print a green background trimmed in tiny brown dots on the front of a folded Café au Lait A2 card, then center the name in brown Beckles Wide. For a name-in-lights look, print a smaller green block on the top of a Café au Lait A7 card with your name top center.

You’ll be seeing spots in the Extreme stationery design, with a letter in alternating green and brown polka dots on Café au Lait stationery. We just created individual text boxes, set the background color, then added a custom border with the shape set to Oval. On the Text tab, we turned off Resize to fit so that the text box will remain a uniform circle. Our sample name uses 9 letters, but you can easily customize the look for your moniker. If your name is less than 9 letters, just remove the letters from the dots before and after your name. If that leaves you lopsided, delete the extra dot, select all the text boxes and group them by choosing Group, Group in the Object menu. Then center the entire block of letters.

PrintingPress sample
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PrintingPress Platinum sample
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PrintingPress Extreme sample
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PrintingPress Extreme sample
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An overdue idea
Sharing a book can be a wonderful thing – unless it’s never returned. Put “From the Library of…” stickers in your book as a subtle reminder where they came from. This is also a great gift idea for your book worm friend – along with Easy Invitations, of course!

Using PrintingPress Extreme, we created a text box to hold the “From the library of…” text and used the text shape tool to shape it in a perfect circle using Benjamin Caps from Fonts & Graphics for Weddings . We set the background color to green and added a double border in brown to the outside of the circle. For tips on how to make the classic double line border, see this month’s Extreme Tip. We created a circle monogram with a green background as well and added a white border to create a dividing line between the monogram and the text. Print onto 1.67” circle labels from an office supply store and start tagging your books!

Dinner is served
Now that the holiday craze is over, have your friends over for dinner for no reason at all. No need to make 12 types of cookies or mull spices for your wine, but sending invitations will make your guests feel special, even if they have to bring their own dessert.

The chic Pistachio stationery with the whimsical Ryan font from Fonts & Graphics 3 sets the right tone for the call “Let’s Eat!” The brown text and silverware image coordinates with the Chocolate A6 envelopes.

Platinum users can add dinner party details to the mod background image of pink and brown circles lining the left side of the card. The same pattern is repeated on the bottom of the place cards. Printed on Café au Lait stationery, the brown Beckles text ties into the Chocolate A6 envelopes.

Our Extreme sample creates a retro feel using overlapping transparent text boxes. Like the Extreme personalized stationery sample, we used one letter per text box. But then we lowered the opacity of the background color of a text box (see last month’s Extreme Tip). The thick Ryan font shows through the transparent colors clearly. We copied a few of the text boxes onto the place cards and removed the letters so that they are just semi-transparent overlapping shapes. The Café au Lait A6 stationery lets the green and brown combo really pop.

PrintingPress sample
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PrintingPress Platinum sample
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PrintingPress Extreme sample
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PrintingPress sample
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PrintingPress Platinum sample
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PrintingPress Extreme sample
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Calendar cue
Help good news travel faster by sending save the date cards for your upcoming wedding.

Got a photo of you and your sweetie that you want to use? Our PrintingPress sample is perfect for you! Just replace our photo with your own and change to grayscale for a little contrast. We used Benjamin Caps from Fonts & Graphics for Weddings to specify all the details for the special day. The ampersand is from the Alyssa font, also from Fonts & Graphics for Weddings, added for some extra flair. The black and white photo on the ivory card of Café au Lait stationery creates a dramatic look.

For our Platinum sample, you don’t need to worry about getting on your guests’ calendars - give them their own! We created the dates using tabs, so you can personalize this calendar easily by changing the month title (written in Alyssa from Fonts & Graphics for Weddings), adjusting the numbers to shift around the dates and placing the circle over your big day. We used Benjamin Caps from Fonts & Graphics for Weddings to write the details of the wedding and printed it on Blueberry Truffle A6 stationery.

For a classy little number, our Extreme sample uses a combination of Alyssa and Benjamin Caps fonts from Fonts & Graphics for Weddings in red on a 3.5 x 5 ivory card. We added a custom red double border using the Round rectangle shape and used a corner punch to round the corners of the card to match the border. Pop it into a Deep Red 4 bar envelope and your guests will definitely save the date.