For a modern twist on a traditional style, check out our PrintingPress Platinum 6.0 design. We added an orange and blue quatrefoil border image to the Natural Cotton A7 invitation and then added the bride and groom’s names in grey using the Noodles font from Fonts & Graphics 3. We joined the names with the word “and” written in blue using the Palatino Linotype font that is included with Windows. We used the Palatino Linotype font in grey for the rest of the invitation text and added 1 point Character Spacing for an airy look. We added a similar border to the Natural Cotton 4-Bar response card and used our printer’s borderless printing feature to print both cards. We lined the Powder Blue envelopes with Custom Envelope Liners featuring the orange quatrefoil pattern. The invitation liner also features the bride and groom’s names. The coordinating Custom Image StationeryStamps. feature the orange quatrefoil pattern and the bride and groom’s initials.

Our PrintingPress Extreme 6.0 design features a bold pattern in a sophisticated color palette that you can easily customize to suit your color scheme. We started by adding a custom border to the Natural Cotton A7 invitation. We set the border’s width to 3 inches and set the border’s shape to Line(Top). We filled the border with a new zig zag pattern and used the Colorize feature to make the zig zags light blue. Next, we used a floating text box to add the bride & groom’s names in white joined by a blue ampersand. We wrote the names using the Palatino Linotype font and filled the background of the text box in grey. We added a Double Line (Top and Bottom) custom border to the text box to make it really pop against the zig zag pattern. We added the invitation text in grey and blue using the Palatino Linotype font. We repeated the same design on the Natural Cotton 4-Bar response card and used our printer’s borderless printing feature to print the invitation and response cards. We lined the Powder Blue envelopes in Pewter and added coordinating Custom Image StationeryStamps.

Acknowledging sympathy
The loss of a loved one is a difficult, painful time. Expressions of love and sympathy from friends and family can be a comfort to help you through the intense shock of your loss. Sending a quick note of thanks lets you acknowledge your appreciation of their expressions of sympathy and reach out to those around you. We have created simple sympathy acknowledgement cards so that you can print a batch and then use as needed. Each design features a simple message and the loved one’s name on the front of a folded note card, leaving you room for a short note inside.

Sometimes the perfect message can be framed by the most traditional design. Our PrintingPress Platinum 6.0 design combines script and block text on an Ecru 4-Bar folded note card. We added the message in grey using the Isabelle font from Fonts & Graphics 2 and added the loved one’s name in periwinkle using the Palatino Linotype font in all uppercase letters. We added a 0.03 inch periwinkle custom border for a touch of elegance. We lined the Ecru envelopes in Twilight and used underscore characters “_” to create a periwinkle line to separate the two lines of the return address.

According to teleflora.com, Queen Anne’s Lace represents sanctuary. A green silhouette of Queen Anne’s Lace sits at the bottom right corner of our PrintingPress Extreme 6.0 design. We added the flower as a floating image to the bottom right corner of a White 4-Bar folded note card. We used the Trebuchet font in grey to add all of the text and set the Text Case to UPPERCASE and added Character Spacing for a clean, modern look. Because the flower runs off the edge of the note card, we used our printer’s borderless printing feature. We lined the White envelopes in Avocado to coordinate with the flower. We used a Reply Envelope to print the return address tucked beneath the flower in the bottom left corner of the back of the envelope. To learn how we achieved borderless printing on the envelope, see this month’s Extreme Tip.

Borderless tricks
We’ve talked a lot about borderless invitation designs, but this is our first foray into bringing borderless designs to the envelope. With a few sly tricks, you can fool your desktop ink jet printer into printing all the way to the edge of your envelopes or cards that are not standard photo sizes. This technique won’t let you achieve full bleed on all edges, but you can create designs that include elements that run off the top and left edges.

First keep the limitations in mind when creating your design. Since you’re fooling the printer into thinking it’s printing onto a standard photo size, you’ll only have access to borderless design on two edges:  the edges that are top and left when you feed your stationery into the printer (see image below). You can adjust your design or the way that you feed your stationery into your printer to change which two edges, but you will never get more than two.

In our example, we’ve created an envelope with the return address in the bottom left corner of the back of the envelope. We added an image that bleeds off of the edge of the envelope. When you create your design, make sure that you only have the borderless elements running off of two edges, and make sure that the two edges are adjacent.

In order to get the stem of the flower onto the top or left edge, we need to get the bottom of the envelope into the top or left position as shown in the diagrams above. So we’re going to print the Reply envelopes using the one-pass envelope printing feature so that we feed the envelope bottom-first into our printer. From the printer’s perspective, the first edge to feed in is the “top” so in this case the bottom of our envelope becomes the top of the printout when the one-pass envelope feature rotates the printout.

When printing your design, choose the borderless size that is large enough to fit the width of the stationery. Since our 4-Bar envelope measures 5.125 x 3.625 inches, it will not fit within the 3.5 x 5 or 4 x 6 borderless sizes. We used the 5 x 7 borderless size to print our envelope, and made sure to set the Borderless Expansion to Min to preserve our design.

As always, we recommend that you do test prints using plain paper cut to the size of your stationery before printing onto expensive stock. We also recommend that you review our Demystifying Desktop Printing article for more advanced printing tips.

Check out tips on downloading projects, borderless printing and more in our Newsletter Notes section.

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