Today’s lesson is what I call the Sunday Save – change your card orientation.
Many of you know that I sell “finished product”, specifically, custom hand-stamped cards and invitations. Designing cards for others to use presents lots of challenges. Many of them are the same that all of us face in our regular card making. I thought I’d share one today.
Here’s the card I agreed to make.
I won’t go into a lot of detail about the card construction. The sentiment comes from All Things Thanks, a stamp set in the Occasions catalog. That large stamped snowflake is from Peace This Christmas. (Sh-h-h-h the small snowflakes are from a retired stamp set.)
Colors are Bermuda Bay, Pool Party and Whisper White. I think I’m stuck on green-blue these days. Sigh. I love blue (my favorite color) and green and everything in between!
So, what happened? Let’s retrace my steps.
What I did right
I cut out all the card stock. Measurements were accurate. Edges were sharp.
Then I stamped all the layers of the card front. No problems there. The snowflakes are random, so there’s no need for exact placement.
What I did wrong
The next step was to print the message on the inside of the card.
The finished card’s design is portrait mode. That means it’s taller (5-1/2″) than it is wide (4-1/4″). (Landscape more means it’s wider than it is tall.) Easy. When I print the inside of the card, the card stock is open, so it’s 5-1/2″ x 8-1/2″. I put the card stock into the printer’s paper tray and printed it in portrait mode, with respect to the open card stock. Guess what? When you fold over the card, the text on the inside is now in landscape mode. Oh oh.
Usually, when I work on a large order, I print just one card, assemble it and make sure that everything goes together correctly. Not last week. I thought t was only 30 cards. What could go wrong. Certainly, I had it right!
Well, I didn’t notice my error until I started to assemble all the card pieces. I could have re-printed. However, I admit that this was a “pro bono” assignment, so I didn’t want to spend even more to get the job done. Instead, I re-arranged the card elements.
Change the Card Orientation
The card looks fine. I told the woman who asked for the cards if my change was acceptable. It was. Phew!
But here is the lesson learned
When you make a mistake, you don’t need to discard the whole project. Try to use everything you have. changing between portrait and landscape mode is an easy fix. I was able to use all my cut and stamped products, so there was no waste!
Every “mistake” is an opportunity for a design change. Remember that.
And this is the easiest one to do. My Sunday Save – Card Orientation!
