Making Holy Cards


by Sheryl Hobbs

Domestic-Church.Com - Fridge Art - Making Holy Cards

Moms,
Thought some of you might like to try this one! My 12 year old daughter Rosemary got some special paper for printing business cards, a lightweight card stock with perforations, ten cards to a page. (This paper is available form mail-order paper companies and from many business supply stores) She got the idea of using Catholic art to make her own custom holy cards with pictures of saints, Jesus, unborn babies, and little prayers. This would also make nice little commemorative cards for a child's Baptism, First Communion, etc.

We used Microsoft Publisher but any similar program would work, even a simple graphics program would work as long as you can 'import' images from the Web or a clipart file into it. It's a little work to set up the page layout the first time to get it to line up properly with the perforations on the card stock, but it's easier to do as many as you want, with as many designs as you want once you have the first 'template' or pattern made.

It is much easier to make a page of one design than to vary cards on a page. The following directions use Microsoft Publisher, but once you've read them (they're really simple) you should be able to figure out how to do them with a different program.

To make a sheet with 10 copies of the same card (much easier than 10 different cards!) choose Page Wizards, then select business cards, then choose classic style. Don't worry about what you write for name, address, phone, etc, because you will erase all that. Important: select multiple copies of the card on each page, NOT one card. It will only show one card when you are designing it, but will print 10 copies.

The paper we used was Avery Ink Jet Business Cards, item #8371, which gives you enough paper to make 250 business or holy cards (25 sheets, 10 on each) for about $10 at Office Depot. Avery also recommends using this paper with a program called My Business Cards, which we have, but we just used Publisher because that's what we are more familiar with.

To make one sheet with many different cards on it, we made a box the dimensions of one card, then copied it and made 10 cards, which we grouped in 2 rows of 5 each. The paper comes with a test sheet on regular paper with rulers along the sides, so we were able to determine where the cards should be placed. When we thought we had it right, we printed a sheet of just these boxes (no pictures or words)on plain paper and then held it up to the light with the test page to make sure the boxes were all where they should be, so the cards would divide correctly. We then 'grouped' all these boxes so we could treat them as one item.

Then came the fun part - using pictures and word art to make each card. Some sites on the Internet with free religious art are:

When we were ready to print, I made a copy of this pattern page and used it to 'paste' the pictures and text into. That way, I have a copy of my pattern always ready to make more cards!. Then I deleted the group of boxes so there weren't lines at the edge of each card. I hope this was less confusing, rather than more confusing. Write back if you need more help.

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