Need some last minute Christmas cards? Free Printables

Do you give Christmas cards?  I am afraid I am not very good with giving them.  I usually wait until the last minute and then just say, “next year.”  Of course, when next year comes it’s always the same.  I do find myself wishing a had a card or two to place a gift card inside, so I designed a few easy cards to print, and thought you might could use a few as well.

These are easy as print, cut, and fold. 

By clicking on the image(s) below, you can download and save the jpg file to your computer and then you will need to open it in any program that will allow you to use a jpg.  Instructions on how to print using Pixlr.com (a free program) are at the bottom of this post.

(click image to download)

 

(click image to download)

To print the chalkboard cards, use the borderless feature on your printer if you have it. That way it will print to the edge and you will not have a white border.

If you do not have a borderless feature on your printer, or if you are concerned about ink usage, the white card below will work without the borderless feature.

(click image to download)

  Printing these with Pixlr.com is very simple.

When you click on the Pixlr link, it will give you a list of choices.  Choose open image from computer.

Navigate to where you saved the image, click it and choose open.

The image will open.  Then go to file in the upper left hand corner and click on print.  You will then be in a print screen dialog box, go to the bottom of the screen and choose “print using system dialog…”, choose preferences to access the settings on your printer. Be sure to choose the landscape orientation.

Once you print, cut at 5 1/2 inches, then fold in half.  You can see the cut line on the chalkboard cards, so you just need to cut on that line.

If you like the Christmas presence nativity card, I have an 8 x 10 digital print download in my Etsy shop along with some other Christmas scripture chalkboard printables.

Thanks for stopping by.

How to Add a Photo to Wallpapers Using Pixlr.com

I had a question about how to add photos to the wallpapers I created.  I know not everyone has Photoshop or photo editing software, so I found a free software editing program online.  It’s called Pixlr and there is no downloading or installing required, you just use it from their webpage and save the file to your computer.  I figured out how to use it so I could make a tutorial for you so you could add your photo to the wallpapers.  It’s really pretty simple.  I know this is a very photo heavy post, but I don’t know any other way to make a tutorial.  Sorry! :( 

Here we go!

1. Download and save the wallpaper files you would like to use to your computer in a location you can easily find them.

2. Go to Pixlr.com. 

I had to crop the images so you could see them better on my blog, but you should see the screen image below.  You should also be able to click on the picture for a larger view.

3. Click the “Open image from computer” link and find the wallpaper file you saved to your computer earlier.  Click save to open it.

Once you open it your screen should look like the screen above.

4.  Go to the Layer tab at the top of the screen, and click the “Open image as layer” link.  You will then choose the photo you would like to use from its location.  Click save to open the photo.

5.  Once your photo opens it will probably be huge.  You will then go to the Edit tab at the top and click the “Free transform” link.  At the corners of your photo, you will see little blue squares.  (You can see this circled in yellow in the photo below.)  When you hover over the square, you will see a double-ended arrow.  Hold the shift key and drag the arrow inward to resize your photo.  It is very important that you hold the shift key as you drag or your photo will end up  looking distorted.  Resize it until it is about the size of the opening in the frame.  It’s ok if it is a little bigger, as we are going to place it behind the wallpaper in another step.

6.  After you resize the photo to fit, you need to hover over the blue square again.  You should see an arrow with a little dotted half circle.  This is the rotate tool.  With the rotate tool visible, right click and rotate the photo to fit over the frame.  Once you have the photo resized and rotated, move it to cover the opening of the frame.  You want it cover the frame without seeing any of the white edges.  It’s ok for it to be larger than the opening, but you don’t want it smaller.  Left click outside the photo and a dialog box will pop up asking you to save changes.  Click yes.

7.  Almost there!  On the right side of your screen, you should see a layers box.  Drag layer 1 under layer 0.  Your photo should now be under the wallpaper and positioned in the frame.  If not, click on the picture layer (should be layer 1) in your layer box and go back to the picture and reposition it.  (You may need to go back to the “free transform” tool in step 4 to make the blue squares visible.)

8.  Now all we need to do is save it and it’s ready to use.   Go to the “File” tab and click the save link.  This will bring you to the save dialog box you see in the photo below.

9.  You can change the name of the photo.  I changed mine to “desktop with picture” so its easier to find exactly the one I want to use on my computer.  You also want to change the format to JPEG.  You can leave the quality as is.  Click the OK button and the next screen will ask where to save it on your computer, save it to the location you want it.  I just save it to the same place as the original.  That’s it, you’re done!

10.  Go to the location on your computer that you saved the finished wallpaper and right click on the image.  Choose “set as desktop background”.  You should now see it as your desktop background.

I hope this was easy enough to understand, I tried to make it as simple as I could.  I hope it helps!

Enjoy your day!

Psalm 107:2 WORDart & a Tutorial on how to resize in Windows WordPad

 

First, I would like to say a great big thank you for all of your prayers, comments and emails in the past week.  You all sure know how to lift a girl up!  It meant so much.  I am feeling a lot better.  I am on a very low fat diet until my surgery on the 28th.  It makes food rather uninteresting, but it’s keeping the pain away, so I am not complaining one bit.  I am a little nervous about the surgery, but I know God will be right there beside me. 

 

I am so thankful I have been redeemed by the blood of my Lord Jesus Christ.  I never want to be ashamed to stand up and say what He has done for me. He is such an awesome God!  Even in the darkest of days, He is still the light.  Could you imagine how dark it would be without Him?  I don’t ever want to be without His presence in my life.  I need Him and I am not afraid to say so.

You can download this WORDart here.

 

How to resize the WORDart in Windows WordPad

Did you know that you can open and resize the WORDart in Windows WordPad?  This is what you do:

1. Go to Windows start button

2. Click on All Programs

3. Open the Accessories folder

4. Click on WordPad

5. Once WordPad is open, click on the picture icon and select picture.

6. Navigate to where you saved the file on your hard drive and select the jpg file.  (If this is your first time using WordPad, you may have to select Create New first.)

7. Once the picture opens in WordPad, click on it and a box with four squares at each corner will be around it.

8. Hover your mouse over the bottom right square and your cursor will turn into a two-way arrow.  Drag your cursor toward or away from the graphic to resize it.

9. You can then go to the top left hand box (next to Home) and choose print to print it.

I hope this is helpful to someone!

Have a blessed day!

~Karen

Psalm 56:3 WORDart

I am so thankful that I am not alone in the world.  That whenever fears come my way, as they do to all of us, I know that if I trust in God He will take care of me.  There is nothing that my God cannot make right.  I can have complete confidence that He will see me through the darkest night or the scariest situation.  He is only a whispered prayer away.  I learned this scripture to a song when I was much younger.   I remember one time in particular…I was a young mother with two very young kids.  My husband was away on business and I had to go out with my children and got home very late.  It had been raining like crazy, when I got home, the entrance to our apartment was flooded and I could not get my key to work at all.  My youngest was just a baby and was asleep and my daughter was 2, it was a long walk back to my car and I remember feeling so incredibly alone and scared.  As I stood there standing in the flooded water trying to get my door open while holding my sleeping baby and trying to calm my two year old, that song came to my mind and I sang it right there.  I felt such peace come over me and knew everything was going to be all right.  I tried the lock again and it opened with no problem.  Sometimes I think God just wants us to recognize our need for Him, to realize that if we trust in Him, He will take care of us. 

On to the card, the Design Divas challenge for January was to use stitching on a card.  I have seen some beautiful cards with stitching on them, but I am afraid mine will never fit in that category.   I just can’t seem to stitch on paper.  I will keep trying…practice makes perfect.   I used a Curved Rectangle nestibilitie die to cut the image, then distressed it with Walnut Stain distress ink.  The paper is from the Cozy digital kit by Retrodiva.  The ribbon is some that I had in my stash. 

I created the wordart on this card.  I really like using scriptures on my cards and noticed a lack of scriptures in the stamping industry.  I really enjoy doing this type of stuff, so I thought I would share with whoever wanted to use it.  You can find the file HERE.  It is a zipped file with both a jpg and png file.  The only thing I ask is that you link back to this post and let others know it is available to them as well.

If you want to change the color of the file, here is what you do.

In Photoshop or Photoshop Elements:

1. Open the PNG file.

2. Click on foreground color and change to desired color.

3. Go to Edit>Fill.  Choose foreground color.  Make sure preserve transparency is checked and mode is set to normal, opacity at 100%.  Click OK.

To change a single word:

1. Do steps 1 and 2.

2. Use the polygonal lasso tool to select the word you wish to change.

3. Follow step 3 above. 

I know there is a way to do this in Microsoft Word as well, but my Word program was throwing a fit and would not work for me.

I hope that makes sense.  This is my first time doing this, so if there are any problems or you have any questions, please feel free to contact me or leave a comment. 

Thank you so much for stopping by today.  Have a blessed day!

Image	computer generated wordart
Paper	Cozy digital kit (Retrodiva), PTI white (base)
Ink	Walnut Stain distress ink
Other	curved rectangle nestibilitie die, sewing machine, ribbon