Mountaincow Monthly (January 2007)

HOME · MOUNTAINCOW MONTHLY NEWSLETTER (JANUARY 2007) Happy New Year! We’re excited to start 2007 with a batch of fresh project ideas. Our sweet new Valentine’s Day designs are perfect for expressing true love or sending to school with your kids. If you’re feeling a bit like Cupid, use our PrintingPress Extreme 4.0 design to plan a Valentine’s Day matchmaking dinner party. Did you fall behind and never quite get those holiday cards out? Problem solved! Be original and send one of our New Year’s Greetings cards to stay in touch with friends and family. And for all those lovebirds who suddenly find themselves planning a wedding, we have elegant new wedding invitation designs in both bold and subtle color palettes.

Be mine Whether you need a Valentine’s Day card for your spouse, best friend, neighbor or child’s class, our adorable designs will brighten up anyone’s day. The folded card designs leave room inside for you to pen a personal note. Our PrintingPress design is adorned by a small red square with a white heart printed on a White 4-bar scored note card. We added the words “be mine” beneath the image in the same red using the Charlotte font from Fonts & Graphics 3. We used PrintingPress’ Inner Envelope stationery type to print just the name onto the front of the Deep Red 4-bar envelope. For a bold look, try our Platinum design. We used our printer’s borderless printing feature to print a background image of overlapping semi-transparent hearts onto a White 4-bar scored note card. For more information on borderless printing, review the Tech Tip from the November 2004 issue of the Mountaincow Monthly. We used three floating text boxes to add the words “be my valentine” above the center of three of the hearts using the Alyssa Afternoon font from Fonts & Graphics for Weddings and set the text color to off-white using RGB(254, 254, 254) so that the text won’t disappear when the text box’s Make White Transparent setting is enabled. We used the Inner Envelope stationery type to print the recipient’s name on the front of a Deep Red 4-bar envelope. Our PrintingPress Extreme 4.0 design is centered around a sweet red heart printed on a Scalloped White A2 scored note card. We used combination of four floating text boxes with different Shape settings to bend the words “happy valentine’s day · be my valentine · be mine” around the heart. For more information on using text shapes, see this month’s Extreme Tip. We used pink text in the Ryan font to contrast with the heart, then added a custom border using a dotted line border in red. Slip it into a Deep Red A2 envelope and you’re set.		PrintingPress sample (click to enlarge) PrintingPress Platinum sample (click to enlarge) PrintingPress Extreme 4.0 sample (click to enlarge)
PrintingPress Extreme 4.0 sample (click to enlarge)	Playing Cupid Valentine’s Day is a great excuse to get all your single friends together and see if any sparks fly. A dinner party with assigned seating is the perfect way to allow you to choreograph the evening and try on Cupid’s bow and arrow. Using PrintingPress Extreme 4.0’s new Shape tool, we added a shape to the bottom of a White 4-bar flat card and filled the shape with a new Valentine-themed pattern. We sized the shape so that it is the same width as the card and used our printer’s borderless printing feature when we printed the card. For more information on borderless printing, review the Tech Tip from the November 2004 issue of the Mountaincow Monthly. We added floating heart images at the top of the card and selected them all and used the Distribute Horizontally button in the Alignment toolbar to evenly space the images. We then grouped the hearts and then set Relative to Stationery and Align Horizontal Center to center the group of hearts on the card. Next, we adjusted the card’s margins to be below the row of hearts and above the shape and then used the Align Middle button in the Line Spacing toolbar to vertically center the text on the card. We added the party details in red using the Times font. Print the address on a Deep Red 4-bar envelope and it’s ready to send. For the dinner party, we printed place cards also using our printer’s borderless printing feature by pretending that our 3.5 x 4 inch scored place cards were really 3.5 x 5 inch flat cards. We checked the feed stationery bottom first checkbox in the Print window to account for the fact that our card is actually smaller than the borderless print size.
Two thousand and... huh? Time seems to fly faster during the holidays, and it’s easy to let things slip through the cracks with all the gift giving and merriment keeping you busy. If you didn’t get your holiday cards sent out, use a New Year’s Greetings card instead. Our PrintingPress design sends a simple message beneath an image of the earth on a White A7 scored note card. We printed the text “peace on earth” in red using the Benjamin font from Fonts & Graphics 2. We printed a personalized message on the inside of the card, but left room for you to jot a quick note as well. Slip it into a Deep Red A7 envelope and it’s ready for the postman. Our Platinum design uses a festive image of champagne glasses toasting on a pink background printed on a White A7 scored note card. We added the image as the card’s background image and set the opacity to 100%. We then used the Noodles Strong font from Fonts & Graphics 3 to add the words “Happy New Year” in white aligned to the right margin of the card. We printed a personalized message on the inside of the card as well. Paired with a Clover A7 envelope lined in Pink, it is bound to bring good cheer. To make a big statement, try our PrintingPress Extreme 4.0 design. We used the Point Justify feature to fill the margins with the message “happy new year” on the front of a White A7 scored note card. We used the Alyssa Black Tie font from Fonts & Graphics for Weddings and set the vertical alignment to Justify Vertically so that the swoopy ascenders and descenders of the characters would overlap. Send in a Chocolate A7 envelope with a Twilight liner.		PrintingPress sample (click to enlarge) PrintingPress Platinum sample (click to enlarge) PrintingPress Extreme 4.0 sample (click to enlarge)
PrintingPress sample (click to enlarge) PrintingPress Platinum sample (click to enlarge) PrintingPress Extreme 4.0 sample (click to enlarge)		Here comes the bold Wedding invitations express the bride and grooms’ personalities as they join their lives together. Make a bold statement with our new wedding invitation designs. A patch of bamboo adorns our PrintingPress design on an Ivory A7 flat card. We printed the couple’s names in Alyssa Afternoon from Fonts & Graphics for Weddings at the left of the card and added the wedding details in Benjamin Caps from Fonts & Graphics for Weddings aligned to the right margin of the card. We used our printer’s borderless printing feature to print all the way to the edge of the card. For more information on borderless printing, review the Tech Tip from the November 2004 issue of the Mountaincow Monthly. We lined the A7 Ivory envelope in Avocado to coordinate with the bamboo. We added the same bamboo image to the Ivory 4-bar flat response card, and paired it with an Ivory 4-bar envelope lined in Avocado. Our Platinum design uses a background image with a collection of bold orange scroll designs clustered near the top right corner of a White A7 flat card. We added the couple’s names in matching orange using the Noodles Strong font from Fonts & Graphics 3 and aligned them to the right margin of the card. We used a floating text box to add the wedding details using the Benjamin Caps font from Fonts & Graphics for Weddings. We expanded the text box’s horizontal and vertical spacing for an airy look. We used our printer’s borderless printing feature to print all the way to the edge of the card. For more information on borderless printing, review the Tech Tip from the November 2004 issue of the Mountaincow Monthly. Pair with a Chocolate A7 envelope and it’s ready to send. We added a similar background image to the White 4-bar response card and tucked it under the flap of a Chocolate 4-bar envelope. A dramatic border surrounds our PrintingPress Extreme 4.0 design. We used a new pattern and the custom border feature to add the border to a White A7 flat card. We set the stationery border width to 1 inch and gave it a 1 pixel black inner pen. We then added the text in a floating text box using the Alyssa Afternoon font from Fonts & Graphics for Weddings. We added a red custom border to the text box using a 2 pixel solid outline and a 4 pixel inner pen using the Bumps line type. We set the spacing on the inner pen to 4 to separate the bumps. We added a red flourish image from Fonts & Graphics for Weddings to complete the elegant look. We used our printer’s borderless printing feature to print all the way to the edge of the card. For more information on borderless printing, review the Tech Tip from the November 2004 issue of the Mountaincow Monthly. Paired with a Deep Red A7 envelope, it will definitely get noticed. The White 4-bar response card uses the same border and has a matching Deep Red 4-bar envelope.
Bending to your will You are not limited to the text shapes available in PrintingPress Extreme 4.0, you can use combinations of the shapes to create virtually any design you desire. For our example, we used a few different shapes to wrap text around a heart. We started with a single word “happy” in a floating text box at the bottom left of the heart. We selected the text shape Bend Down and decreased both the height of the curve (the value in the Curve height field) and the length of the bend (the value in the Frequency field). By setting the Frequency to 0.5, the txt shape was effectively set to half a bend. We expanded the horizontal spacing to space out the letters a bit. We rotated the text box to the left so that the text nestled perfectly into the bottom of the heart. For the next text box, we entered the text “valentine’s day ·” and set the text shape to Semicircle. We compressed the horizontal spacing of the text to bring the curve of the semicircle tighter to match the curve of the heart. We rotated the text box to the left until it lined up with the “happy” and tucked it around the left of the heart. Our third text box containing “be my valentine” also uses the text shape Semicircle. We compressed the character spacing as well and rotated the text box to the right to curve around the right bump of the heart. Our final text box contains the text “· be mine ·” and uses the Inverted Wave shape with the Curve height greatly reduced to create just the slightest bend. We rotated the text box to the right until it fit perfectly to complete the path around the heart.