Mountaincow Monthly (October 2006)

HOME · MOUNTAINCOW MONTHLY NEWSLETTER (OCTOBER 2006) Looking for one more thing to be thankful for this Thanksgiving? Then check out Mountaincow’s new PrintingPress Extreme 4.0. Use the software to print fabulous table stationery for all your fall festivities. Throwing a baby shower? We have adorable invites to honor the mom-to-be using Extreme 4.0’s new dotted line border feature. If your child’s birthday is coming up, we have some party invitations for a roarin’ good time. Having a formal wedding? Impress your special guests with classy invitations for the rehearsal dinner.

Gobble this up You don’t need to go out of your gourd to create a fall backdrop for your Thanksgiving dinner. Instead, create menus and place cards which will be both decorative and practical. Letting your guests know what’s being served and where to sit will give credit to Uncle Steve for his famous potatoes, and even allow you to gather the under-12 set at one end of the table. Our PrintingPress design uses a fall harvest image at the top of an Ivory menu card with the courses written in Noodles from Fonts & Graphics 3 and the dishes in Jackson Junior Sans, alternating between purple and brown text. The menu is mounted on a custom-cut 5 x 8.5 inch Chocolate card. Guests’ names are written in Noodles on Ivory place cards. Our Platinum project features a brown background image with fall leaf cutouts. When printed on Avocado menus and place cards, the leaves and the white writing take on the soft green color of the card stock. Not feeling green? Use a different color menu for a totally different look. We used Noodles from Fonts & Graphics 3 for the courses and Benjamin from Fonts & Graphics 2 for the dishes. Guests’ names are written in Noodles on the place cards. Our Extreme design uses PrintingPress Extreme 4.0’s new custom border tools. First we added a text box with the words “Happy Thanksgiving” at the top of the Ivory menu. We added a custom border to the text box, specifying the border shape as Line (Bottom) so it only appears on the bottom edge of the text box. To fill the border, we used a soft green background color and repeated a brown oak leaf image across the border. For more information on border fill types, see this month’s Extreme Tip. The outer and inner lines of the border are set to the new Bumps line type in brown. The meal courses are written in the Alyssa Afternoon font and the dishes are in Benjamin Caps, both from Fonts & Graphics for Weddings. The guests’ names are written in Alyssa Afternoon on Ivory place cards, and we added the same line border to the place card that we used on the text box on the menu.			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) PrintingPress Extreme 4.0 sample (click to enlarge) PrintingPress Extreme 4.0 sample (click to enlarge)		Looks like showers Who says everything baby has to be pastel? Use our bold baby shower invitations created with PrintingPress Extreme 4.0 to get ready for a special baby. We’ve created several options for you so that you’re prepared for a baby boy or baby girl. We chose a Midnight envelope for our boy invitation, a Magenta envelope for the girl, and a Clover green envelope for our neutral invitation, and coordinated our adorable baby carriage image to match. The party details are written in Times New Roman with Noodles from Fonts & Graphics 3 for accent. We also added a stationery border with the border shape set to Line (Right) and chose the Dotted line type with spacing between the dots to create polka dots running down the right side of the A6 White card.
Birthday bash! Planning a little one’s birthday party is a lot of work, so at least make the invitations easy by using PrintingPress. We revved up our PrintingPress invitation with a cool motorcycle image at the top of an A6 white card. We used Brina Strong, a font made from a child’s handwriting, from Fonts & Graphics 3 and paired the White A6 card with a Midnight envelope. The background image for our Platinum design is a friendly dinosaur. We used the Brina Strong font from Fonts & Graphics 3 and added the party details in text boxes and rotated them to fit inside the dinosaur’s body. We set the text color for the text in the text boxes to off white (RGB (254, 254, 254)) so that the text will appear even when Make White Transparent is set. We paired the White A6 card with a Dusty Blue envelope. For a wild party, we created a new giraffe pattern for our Extreme invitation and used it to fill a large number 2 which we then outlined it in green. We also added a custom border with a solid inner green line and an outer line using the new Bumps line type in brown. All the text is written in the Ryan font. We paired the A6 White card with a Clover envelope.			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 invitation (click to enlarge)	‘Twas the night before the wedding… Rarely does any “rehearsing” happen the night before a wedding, but getting the out-of-towners and family together for dinner is a nice way to introduce everyone before the big day. For a modern look, we used A7 White/Deep Red Two Tone stationery for our PrintingPress invitation, printing a line of polka dots to the top of the white card. To coordinate with the dots on the card, we lined the Deep Red envelope with Circles (pink & red) envelope liners. The text on the invitation and on the white place card is written in Jackson Junior Sans Wide. For a more traditional, elegant design, our Platinum invitation uses a decorative blue border on A7 Ivory/Midnight Two Tone stationery. The invitation details are in the Benjamin font from Fonts & Graphics 2 accented with the Alyssa font from Fonts & Graphics for Weddings. The A7 Midnight envelope is lined with Ivory liners. The same decorative border is printed on Ivory place cards with the guests’ names written in Alyssa. For the Extreme design, we added a bold strip on the left edge of the card using a stationery border with the border shape set to Line (Left). We set the left margin to 1.5 inches to leave room for the border and filled the border with a custom pattern combining green spirals on a brown background. The text, written in Benjamin Caps from Fonts & Graphics for Weddings is fully justified so it is spaced evenly across the left and right margins. We also vertically aligned the text to the bottom so that the last line of text sits flush against the bottom margin of the card. We left the line of text with the bride & groom’s last names centered instead of justified, and then added their first names in green in the Alyssa font from Fonts & Graphics for Weddings in floating text boxes so that they would overlap the last names. We printed both the invitation and place card using our printer's borderless printing feature. For more information on borderless printing, see the Tech Tip from the November 2004 Mountaincow Monthly. The A7 Chocolate envelopes are lined with Avocado liners. The same pattern from the invitation is filled into a shape running along the bottom of an Ivory place card. We use the alternate font feature on the place card to print the guests’ first names in Alyssa in green and their last names in Benjamin Caps in brown. In order to achieve this look, we entered the first and last name on two lines when we added each name to the guest list. We condensed the line spacing on the place card to make the name and table information overlap as well.
Fill ‘er up PrintingPress Extreme 4.0 offers new border fill types to let you move beyond solid or patterned custom borders. To add a custom border to your stationery, choose Stationery Border, Add Border in the Design menu and choose Custom in the Border type section. You will see the new Fill type combo box in the Border shape and fill details section. There are three fill types for custom borders: Solid, Shape and Image. The Solid fill type is what you’re used to – specify a solid color or pattern to fill the entire border. The new Shape fill type allows you to specify a shape to be repeated within the border. You can specify the outline of the shape and choose any color (or even a pattern) to fill the shape. You can increase the amount of space between the shapes by increasing the value in the Space field. In the example below, we created an oval stationery border with the Fill type set to Shape. We set the fill background to pink and filled the border with red hearts. To complete the border, we added an 18 point red outline and inner pen with the line type set to Bumps. (click to enlarge) If you choose the Image fill type, you can click the Choose button to locate an image on your hard disk to repeat within the border. You can adjust the spacing between the images using the Space field. In the example below, we added a stationery border with the fill color set to blue and the Fill type set to Image. We repeated the motorcycle image from the 2.0 Birthday Bash project and set the dark blue outline and inner pen to 10 point Dotted (overlapping fill) lines. (click to enlarge) There are many powerful new features in the PrintingPress Extreme 4.0 upgrade. For more information on other new features, please visit our online software tour.