To make Christmas greetings, to create cards in which to write the dedication to accompany the gift or for any other occasion, birthday or anniversary that deserves to be celebrated, you can buy greeting cards in the stationery shop or you can do it at home, on the computer, a personalized and unique greeting card . Without therefore spending a penny and having fun, we see a complete guide to create greeting cards and gift cards with a program like Microsoft Word, easy to use and that everyone should have.
Let's see how to create the ticket design and then how to print it correctly to get a quality postcard.
READ ALSO: Free download Word and PDF templates to download, write, edit and print
First of all you have to choose the right design to put on the postcard.
You can insert a personal photograph, perhaps enhanced by using one of the free web applications to edit photos.
Needless to create one from scratch when there are beautiful images and backgrounds freely downloadable from the internet.
The first resource to look at is the Microsoft Clipart section, available from the "Insert" menu.
More images are available among the best sites to download clip art .
But if you really want to amaze and be original, it is better to look at the best sites to download drawn images and clip art.
On Flickr you can instead search for photos with the advanced search, for the word " Christmas " or " Christmas ", and find drawings with a Creative Commons license, that is, reusable for personal purposes.
Finally, the creation of the greeting card can now begin.
On Word you must first set the page size which, once printed, will be folded in half.
By going to the "Page Layout " menu you can configure the margins by taking an 8.5 "X 11" area with a large margin on the left side.
To do it first you can download the preset sheet for a postcard to be printed, in docx format.
Other ticket templates are on the Avery website but, personally, I found them more complicated.
The next step is to insert photos or images taken by Flickr, from the menu insert -> image or clipart .
From the sheet model with narrow margins, the image is automatically resized adapting perfectly but it is possible to carry out some finishing for a better rendering.
Select the image with the mouse, and, from the top menu of the tools, select a different style for the image.
By clicking on the arrow that opens the drop-down menu you can see the list of available styles; select the one you like best.
For a Christmas card, in my view, the best style is the rectangle with blurred outlines or the " faded rectangle with reflection ".
By pressing on the sheet and moving the cursor upwards, you can write the greeting or dedication message above the image.
The default font, Calibri is not exactly suitable for a festive message so it is better to select another font from the drop-down menu (I like Vivaldi) by setting the right size.
Of course, you can also write under the image, putting the signature or a second part of the message.
Better yet is to download a font or a font to install and, in another article, the best Christmas fonts and fonts to write Merry Christmas are reported.
By inserting a page break (Pressing CTRL-Enter or from the "Insert" menu), you can create a second page of the postcard, with another image and with a new message.
By printing on both sides of the sheet of paper, this second page will be the back or the front depending on the fold.
The only boring part of this work with Word is to format the various parts in a harmonious way, centering texts and images on the two pages, so that their position coincides then in the printing phase.
Since each printer works in a different way, it is better to do some quick proofs first, perhaps by setting the print in black and white to save ink and checking which is the right direction to insert the sheet .
I suggest printing one page at a time, without using the automatic "front and back" setting.
After printing, you can fold the paper in half and thus obtain a postcard with a cover on the front page and, inside, the greeting message.
It is not necessary to use expensive photographic paper models, you can instead use a more rigid type of paper (it should be supported by all printers), card stock, to obtain optimal results from "stationery".
Alternatively, if you want to do it first, you can create personalized greeting cards for parties with automatic web applications.
