Design Your Own Personalized Stationery

Do you ever miss the days when we didn’t have so much technology at our fingertips?  I do!  I really thought about it when going through my Christmas cards this year.  It’s amazing how many printed Christmas cards I received this year. Although I do appreciate the thought, it seems impersonal to me to receive cards without even a written signature. Many of us are too busy to write our own cards so we hire someone to do it for us. We knock it off our list and feel great it’s been accomplished, but we lose the sense of relationship with one another during this process.  I really miss the personal touch of a handwritten message.  How about you? Maybe it’s the ex-English teacher in me, or my love of writing, but I assure you I’m not the only one that feels this way.I love that my neighbor still writes handwritten letters to family and friends.  We had a conversation before Christmas about how difficult it was for her to find stationery in local stores.  That’s when I decided to design her a personalized stationery set for Christmas.  Guess what?  I liked it so much I decided to make some for myself.   Let’s bring back the art of letter writing and make some personalized stationery today!

It really is easy to design your own stationery.  All you need is knowledge of a computer program like Microsoft Word and some nice paper that will work with your printer.  I used this resume paper to print my stationery.  I really liked the texture and weight of it.  Linen textured paper works well, too.  I actually found this set at my local Wal-Mart, but stores like Staples and Office Depot have lots to choose from.

You will want to use pretty fonts for your stationery, so if you don’t have any you like, head over to www.dafont.com for lots of free choices.  Download and install the ones you like.  I used A Song For Jennifer for my stationery.  

You will also need clip art for your stationery.  You can search what’s installed in Microsoft Word for images, but there is also plenty of free clip art on the web. Run a Google search and you will have so many choices, believe me!  Just be sure you are respecting any copyrights for the images you decide to use.  Many clip art images are free for personal use, but double check just to be sure.  I found my watercolor images at Angie Makes.  She has some awesome clip art to choose from, so be sure to head over to her site and check it out.

To get started, all you have to do is open a new document in Microsoft Word, add your text and images, and print.  It really is that simple!  Just insert a text box into the document, add your text and/or image into the box, then format to make it the size you’d like. You can use the cursor to drag the text box around the document until it’s placed where you like it.  You can even re-size the text box by dragging the edges of the box in to make it smaller, or out to make it larger.  Have fun and play with it until it’s just right for you!  

You can layer text boxes, too.  The image at the top of my stationery is actually two layered text boxes.  I added the image of the wreath first, then added another text box with my name on top of it.  

The lined portion of my stationery was made by creating a large text box, then I typed the underscore key repeatedly inside the text box to create the lines.  

Once my images and lines were completed, I added a page border and then I was done.

Well, not really.  I decided to print matching envelopes, so I used a template in Microsoft Word to create one.  I used the same process of adding text boxes with text and images to match the stationery pages. 

I really do love having my very own personalized stationery. If you’re more interested in cards than stationery pages, you can create your own personalized cards, too.  Just change the page layout to match the size of your cards, and use the same process above to design them before printing.

Why not make someone’s day today and send them a handwritten letter or note?  Let them know how much they mean to you in your very own words.  You can show how much you care by taking the time to write your thoughts with ink and paper, not with texts and emails.  A handwritten letter takes more time and effort, and I promise you the gesture will be greatly appreciated.  Join me by taking time to focus on what’s really important today…relationships.

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