Sentiments

Most of my cards are created for Operation Write Home (OWH) "supporting our nation's armed forces by sending blank handmade greeting cards to write home on, as well as cards of gratitude to encourage them."

I really appreciate the easy, clear OWH guidelines for cards, including the reasons why. Recently, they have requested "no handwritten sentiments," for reasons discussed in the guidelines.

I'm not a stamper, and I enjoy hand writing my sentiments, as shown in previous blog posts. But for sentiments on OWH cards, I'll use my computer and printer from now on.

The printing option works well for me. My printer can handle most card stock, at least in small doses. (See "tip" at end of post.) There are some nice fonts in my Office for Mac software, and I can easily vary the ink to go with my color scheme.

I like to leave my cards blank inside. For the card front, I prefer simple sentiments like "thinking of you," "hello," or "love you, miss you." Sometimes, no sentiment at all. Other sentiment examples for a special design include "you are my sunshine" or "so sweet."

Papyrus and Lucida Calligraphy are two of the card-friendly fonts that came with my Mac versions of Word and PowerPoint. In future blog posts, I'll list the font that I used.

Tip - To make one small printed element,

1. Print the sentiment first on plain paper.
2. Use removable tape to position a small piece of card stock over the sentiment. Note: I make sure the top of the card stock is completely "smoothed over" with tape, to prevent its getting caught in my printer. "Know your printer" before trying this technique.
3. Run the plain-paper-with-small-piece through the printer again.
4. If needed, punch or trim to exact size.
5. This also works well for my printer with an A2 (4.25" x 5.5") piece, if the card stock is a bit too stiff to feed in its full 8.5x11" size.