Sunday, July 6, 2008

My beautiful handmade bookmarks!






FINALLY I am able to make my beautiful handmade bookmarks again! I am so excited because I loved making these but for the past couple years I haven't had the software to do it. I previously used MS Word to do this, but it was an older version (2003 maybe?). We just installed MS office Professional Plus 2007, and I was crushed to learn that they changed the Word program so the bookmarks no longer worked. then I started playing around with some of the other programs, and to my delight, I found that the bookmarks can still be made in Microsoft Publisher! In fact, it is much EASIER to make them in there!!!

So if you have MS Publisher, or an older version of MS Word, These bookmarks are really easy to make. As you can see from the pictures, some of them are made from my own pictures, and the more professional ones, I got those pictures from a photography website. I can't sell them, of course, but I can give them away as gifts, which I do! Hopefully someday I will be able to take nice enough looking pictures of my own and I can maybe try selling them!

If you want to try this yourself, just copy and paste your first picture into Publisher (or Word), then using the ruler on top, shrink it to 1 3/4 inches across. Be sure to use the bottom right corner resizer, then it will resize it both ways and keep the dimensions right. Then you past your next picture into Publisher, line it up with the bottom of the first picture, and resize it to match. it's kind of important to line it up first, then resize it, or else you'll have trouble getting it to line up right.

I do 4 pictures for each bookmark, using a strip of 8 pictures for each row (cutting it in half of course), and I can get 8 bookmarks per page. Print it out on high quality photo paper, let dry, and trim them down. I then also run them through my Xyron 900 machine with the two-sided laminating cartridge inserted, and then cut them all apart. The laminated bookmarks last a very long time and they make a beautiful gift! They look so much more beautiful in person... it's hard to take pictures of pictures, but they look like perfect quality photos in person!

I plan to include these as a free gift with every Ebay sale from now on (see link at right). And to celebrate my joy at being able to make them again, I'm going to give away a few to some members of the Cricut Messageboard (again, see link at right)!

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

What a great idea. Thanks for sharing. I might have to try this. Would be a great gift idea, pictures of the kids for Nana. LisaMH

Debra Bagato said...

very nice. I wouldnt even know how to make something that beautiful

LiveLaughScrap said...

Wow, Jamie - those are beautiful. Thanks for the instructions. What kind of printer do you have? My printer doesn't work so well, not sure if it can handle it. I would love to try though.
Thanks for the RAK - will post on the Cricut MB.

Thanks,
Lori

Emily012473 said...

Those are really beautiful! Like artwork! If I could find time to read a book, I'd totally want to mark my pages with something so lovely! :)

Anonymous said...

Jamie,
I hope you get this!! Thank you so much for the bookmarks! I have been trying to get onto the Cricut board since yesterday morning, and it wont let me log on... Anyway, I love the bookmarks, they are just beautiful!!! Thanks again!!
Misti
AKA:ScrappyMouse on the MB

Melissa said...

Those really are beautiful Jamie! Your ebay customers are very lucky! :-)

Melissa said...

I meant to say that I especially love the Disney one!!!

S Glup said...

Those are so awesome....Love this...TFS

Anonymous said...

your bookmarks are gorgeous
nicely done