Monday, January 16, 2012

Tutorial | Printing Onto Project Life Journal Cards

I’ve been doing Project Life since May 2011 and one of my favorite things to do is to type my journaling on the computer and then print them out onto the 3x4 journal cards in the Project Life kit.  I print them onto the cards with design on them, and I print them onto the grid journal cards as well.  You can see some examples here.







A lot of people have asked me how to print onto the Project Life journal cards themselves, so I recorded a video of how to do this.  In the tutorial, I use Photoshop CS3 to demonstrate, but you could use any version of Photoshop or Photoshop Elements for this to work.  (I would imagine this would also work in MS Word if you know how to set up the document size and do a text box in that software.)  Also, in order to print straight onto a 3x4 journal card, your printer will need to have a rear paper tray with an adjustable paper guide. (Many printers have this feature.)  My printer is the Canon Pixma MP620, but it’s been discontinued.  If it broke today and I had to buy another one, I would probably purchase the Canon Pixma MG5220.  I print both my photos and my journal cards on the same printer, which is very convenient.

What if you don't have a printer that has a rear paper tray?  Liz Tamanaha (Paislee Press) has written an awesome tutorial on how to print onto 3x4 journal cards by adhering them to a 8.5x11 sheet of paper.  She even has offered a template for you to download.  :)

For the tutorial, I’m going to print onto this piece of Project Life journal card from the Clementine core kit.  It has a border on the top and the bottom.
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So here’s the video.  It is about 7 minutes long.  If you're already familiar with setting up your document size in Photoshop or Photoshop Elements, and creating text boxes, then you can skip to minute 3:55, where I start showing you how to do the print setup.  :)



And here’s the journal card printed out.  :)
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Hope this tutorial helps you.  Let me know if you have any questions or comments.
PS - I just want to add that this tutorial will work for printing on any size journal cards, as long as you specify what size it is in your PS document and also in your printer setup window.

22 comments:

  1. Wow Christine! That -tut- is fantastic! Thanks for that and your effort to show us how it works.

    Can´t wait to see more of it.

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  2. Loved the tutorial. Having a hard time getting it to print on the page....any quick tips on what Im doing wrong.

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  3. Hi Anonymous!

    Without knowing what the specific problem is, I'm afraid I'm not able to help you with your printing problem.

    Christine

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  4. wonderful tutorial! I also really like your banner.

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  5. Awesome tutorial. Thanks!

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  6. Nice video! I have a manual tray that opens on the front of my laser printer, so I am going to try this on the grid cards.

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  7. Great tutorial, thanks so much!

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  8. great tutorial! I was also wondering what font you used on the PL cards right above the example (the red title and black text) Thanks!

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  9. Great little video! I am so excited to try this--thanks for taking the time to share it!
    Patty G. in NJ

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  10. Tami, the font for the red titles on my printed out journal cards is called Mari & David. You can download it here: http://www.dafont.com/mari-david.font

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  11. Thanks for the video tutorial. Kinda nice to match your voice with your face. I have a cannon printer and love it. I'm never going back to HP.

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  12. im trying to print the little PL cards out. I have a front printer tray slot to put the pl cards in --cant get them to print out on the iittle cards--any suggestions?

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  13. Great tutorial! I have the same printer as you, just an older model and didn't even think to just feed the journaling card into the rear tray. Brilliant!! Thank you!

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  14. Great tutorial! If you purchase the digital cards that match your paper ones you can use that as a template and see exactly where the type will fit in with the pattern, then just turn the card's background layer off in Photoshop (leaving only your text layer) and send the card through just as you did.

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  15. just me - that's a very good point! I actually use the digi PL journal cards as templates for journaling myself. But for the tutorial I wanted to show how to do it in general, so that everyone can see how to do it, even those without the digital PL journal cards.

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  16. What font are you using for the main text?

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  17. Thanks so much for this! It took a little bit of work to figure it out with my printer and computer (I have a pixma too but a different model) but after only 3 tries it worked perfectly. Thank you thank you! Do you have the size measurements for the larger 4X6 cards?

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  18. Oooh thanks! I have a pixma mp210 which I guess has an adjustable tray? I look forward to trying it out. I have a epson picturemate now so I can just print my 4x6s on there easily. But if this works for single 3x4s then that's good! :)

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  19. Great tutorial. Just what I needed. Hope I can use Pages on my Mac and do the same thing.Thanks so much for sharing. What font did you use on the card in the video?

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    1. It's been two years since I did this tutorial, but I believe that the font for "Sunday" is Pacifico, and the rest is Courier New.

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  20. Thank you so much for this tutorial! Just what I was searching for and so helpful! New blog reader/fan here!

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