Create A Holiday Card with a Free Bonus!

Creating your own Christmas cards are a lot of fun!  While there are lots of ways to put your own crafty touch onto cards, personalizing and printing your own is a fun and economical way to send some holiday cheer.  To make it even more economical, CutCardStock is offering a festive digital image for free to the first 24 blog readers who download it. (Don’t worry if you miss out on the free image… it will be available for purchase.)  To get your free copy of the the digital design, visit the CutCardStock website and click on the Digital Elements category.

Now that you have an image, here are a few easy steps to format a document in Microsoft Word and print out your own greeting.  There are many ways of creating a card on your computer for printing; I wanted to share a common and pretty simple way of getting the job done.

While types and versions of word processors may vary, the steps are similar.  I am showing you in Microsoft Word 2007. 

First, open a new document by going to Mailings / Labels.  Select Avery US Letter and find a wide postcard format that measures 5.5″ wide by 4.25″ high.

Click OK and then click on New Document.

You’ll see 4 areas; to create the front of the printed card, work with the bottom two rectangles.  This way, when you print your document, you can cut it in half lengthwise and then fold each half to create a card.
Click in the bottom left rectangle.  Across the top of the document, you’ll see a ruler that shows where your margins/indents are set.  Click and move the triangles on the left all the way to the left.  Then move the triangles in the center to the center line.  Next, select the bottom right rectangle and do the same with the margins.  This will allow your digital image to use the entire space and not be cropped by margins.

Now that you’ve created the right sized workspace, you’re ready to place your digital image.  Click on the bottom left rectangle and then from the top menu bar, select Insert / Picture / From File.  Get the image from the location you saved it when you downloaded it, and click on Insert.

Place the image on right hand side as well so you can get two cards from one piece of cardstock.

All that’s left now is to print your cards.  You could add some typed text inside or handwrite a personal message.  Choose your favorite CutCardstock product to print on… there are lots to choose from!