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Picture Yourself With A Pretty Graphic Calendar

Calendar Projects from HP.com

Your photo or theirs... count down the days of 2009 with a new photo every month, a coloring calendar for the kids, or other fun and colorful calendar formats. (Image: Calendar Projects from HP.com)

Make a Calendar

Jacci's Desktop Publishing Blog

Download Some Delicious Labels

Sunday October 5, 2008
I'm only a so-so cook but one of my daughters is an aspiring chef.
vintage food label templates from hp.com
One of the Vintage labels at HP.com
I'm thinking about having her put her culinary skills to work creating holiday gifts for friends and family. My contribution would be printing labels and tags for her various baked goods -- cakes are her specialty. I might start with some of these Vintage product labels offered at HP.com. The come as PDF files. There are both labels and tags for some styles. HP provides instructions on printing and cutting out the labels.

Or, try some of these:

Put a Pumpkin in an Envelope

Thursday October 2, 2008
Making your own envelopes can be a bit time-consuming but bulk store-bought envelopes can be boring.
Example of Envelope Liner from Canon's Creative Park
Example of Halloween Envelope Liner from Canon's Creative Park

If you have a large stash of plain white envelopes, dress them up with an envelope liner. Canon's Creative Park has dozens of colorful envelope liner templates you can download, print, cut out, and then insert into your envelope.

There are three Halloween designs too. Tuck a Halloween surprise into your next card or letter.

Here's more Halloween Printables and Craft Ideas.

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Gotta Get a Grunge Font

Sunday September 28, 2008
Can a grunge font be a "must-have" font?
Screen - Blog Theme Machine
Screen shot from Blog Theme Machine

More Free Grunge Fonts

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  • Whether you think so or not, this is a nice-looking list of freebies (hmmm... can grunge fonts be nice-looking?) put together at the Blog Theme Machine of 40 Must Have Grunge Fonts from DaFont.com.

    I like the looks of Trashco and Ginga. I love sketchy, handdrawn fonts like Refuse Trip, Pointy, and Urban Sketch although I never really thought of them as grunge fonts.

    A few individual characters that I like: the backwards e in Karabine, the O and 0 in Heroin 07, and the descenders on Chicago House. And I like the looks of FFF Trusj (another not so grungy font) that looks like some lettering I've done before while doodling.

    When you click on each image it takes you to the download page at DaFont.com. I like the graphics they have there showing the font name in color against various backgrounds. Very nice presentation.

    Stay up to date. Find out what's new each week. Sign up for the Free Desktop Publishing Weekly Newsletter or Desktop Publishing Email Classes.

    Pop Up A Happy Halloween

    Friday September 26, 2008
    Pop up cards turn flat greeting cards into something just a little more fun. For your Halloween greetings or party invitations I've found a couple of pumpkins that are ready to pop out of your printer.
    From PDF of Happy Halloween Pop-Up Card at Paper Museum.
    From PDF of Happy Halloween Pop-Up Card at Paper Museum.

    Here's more Halloween Printables and Craft Ideas.

    Unless you visit the Japanese Paper Museum regularly you might have missed this first fun printable. The site is in Japanese but the fun Halloween printable card is in English. The top button (darker pink) downloads the free PDF file for the card (2 pages). The middle button is a PDF of instructions for creating the pop-up card. It's not in English but there are lots of pictures. (The bottom button is to purchase the card already made, I think). If you download this one, let us know how easy/hard it is to follow the instructions.

    Canon's Creative Park also has a printable pop-up Happy Halloween pumpkin card. The pattern sheets come as PDF formatted for either A4 or US letter size paper. There's a separate PDF with assembly instructions. In addition to the smiling jack-o-lantern, there are witches, bats, and spooky houses in the background.

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