I received a package full of Project Life goodies from American Craft, and I was so excited to try this system out. Have you heard of Project Life yet? If you caught my Photo and Memo Board last week, you will be familiar with the product, since that’s what I used to create the photo board. It’s a system that solves the problem of your photos existing only on the computer – it gets them off the computer and into a book where they can truly be appreciated. It’s basically an easy and time-saving approach to scrapbooking!
I had the opportunity to try out the Honey Edition – full of bright colors and a lot of pink, aqua, and yellow. (It actually matches my daughter’s room perfectly!)
The system makes it so easy to create a layout that I only had one problem when it came time to make my first page. Now, I consider myself to have a decent handwriting, however, it is is often uninspiring and a little bland. Now my computer on the other hand, has tons and tons of fonts that I wish my handwriting looked like. So when it came time to journal on my Project Life cards, I found myself wishing I could write like “honey semi-bold” or “kb scared straight”. So I thought, how hard can it be to print on these cards?
Yeh… not too easy. I can’t tell you how many little cards got stuck in my printer (is anyone with me when I say printers are the worst technology tool ever?? If anything goes wrong, it’s always with my printer). I did a search for how to print on project life cards, and found some good options, but after printing, I realized that I wanted to see the text ON the cards, like I could with digital scrapbooking, before I printed. This would allow me to perfect the size, style, and layout of all of my text. So how could I “preview” before printing? Then I had a “lightbulb” moment, and thought I would share with you!
How to Print on Project Life Cards:
(1) Grab a piece of computer paper, and mark our your margins. I used .5″ margins on the sides and 1″ margins on the top and bottom.
(2) Use double sided tape to stick the cards on the paper, using the margins to make sure the cards are on straight. (If you plan to use the other side of the card, make sure you use a low tack tape like masking tape instead so it will peel off easily without tearing the card.)
(3) Scan your piece of paper with the attached cards – I scanned as a document and saved as a .jpg.
(4) Open your scanned doc in your photo imaging software (I used GIMP, which is a free download software comparable to photoshop). To learn more about using GIMP, view my tutorials here. If there is extra space that has been scanned beyond your paper, crop off the empty space.
(5) Use text on your card previews as you desire.
(6) When you are done, DELETE the layer that you scanned in – otherwise the cards will print on top of each other when you feed it back into the printer.
(7) Save your file as a .png or .jpg.
(8) Open a word document and set your margins to zero all the way around. (Your margins are built into your paper, remember?)
(9) Drag and drop your .png or .jpg file into your Word doc, and make sure it keeps the same 8.5×11 size – it should fill up the whole page.
(10) Put the piece of paper you scanned into your printer feeder (make sure it is facing the right way! Test it before you print on your cards if you aren’t sure) and hit print. You may get a warning saying your margins are too small, but don’t change them – hit ignore.
That’s it! Now you have perfectly aligned, fancy fonted text on your journalling cards!
I added mine to a page all about my daughters birthday party – and since I made my own invitations, I could scale one down and make it the same size as a Project Life card.
I laid out all of pictures, my fun quote cards, and my journalling cards that I printed the text on, and put it in a page protector. I am in love with this and can’t wait to create a full album! How about you, have you tried out the Project Life system yet? I would love to see some of your work, if you have ! I have a feeling it will become a new obsession of mine!
jg says
great tip! thanks for the idea.
Meegan says
I haven’t seen this before! Thanks for the tip. Pinning.
Heidi @ Happiness is Homemade says
What a great idea! I just got the Honey kit and started my album too, so this it absolutely going to come in handy! 🙂
Wendy Bellino says
Awesome!
Louise says
I know this is a year old but I just wanted to say thank you. I can finally make my scrapbook look gorgeous with all those fonts I’ve been hoarding. I just started doing my travel album and I’m already loving the printed journal cards. Thank you.
Shiralee says
I was wondering if you need a top loader printer to do this, I have one that that loads from the bottom and bends the appeared to put it back pit I to the paper tray area if that makes sense?
Sarah says
I have the same type of printer so it should be fine!