Printing Graduation Announcements at Home

One of my favorite things to do create are "photo" announcements and/or invites for special events. So with the pending graduation of my daughter from High School I could not wait to get her photos back from our family photographer, Jennifer Ralphs.

Jennifer is amazing and has taken my son's missionary pictures and our all time favorite family photographs. And the one thing I noticed about Jennifer was that she shoots with a Canon SLR Camera. 

Photo taken along side of dry cleaners in Kaysville.

I have heard Jennifer mention that she loves her Canon camera and that she knows how it works and wouldn't use anything else. She doesn't use fancy light filters or tricks, she uses the natural light, amazing locations and years of experience. She doesn't mind hiking through shrubs, climb over fences, get up a ladder or down on the ground to get the perfect shot (see below)!

Now I simply have to wait for the edited photos to be returned to me so I can get busy designing the announcements. Only problem is there were over 400 photos to pick from and 40 amazing versions that Jennifer had did her magic editing on so I could simply place them how I wanted on the announcement.

Many of the other mom's I've talked to have sent away for their graduate's announcements to companies like Walgreens, Snapfish, Shutterfly, Walmart and TinyPrints. And lot had their photographers design their announcements. I know Jennifer would have done this for me, but I love creating these. Also with our short time between the photo shoot and when I wanted to mail these, I didn't have time to SEND away for prints. Plus I prefer to print at home and see how they look immediately, so this is where my Canon PIXMA iP8720 Crafting Printer comes into play.

Although PicMonkey.com has some great capabilities, I am very familiar with Photoshop and so I got busy creating. I wanted these to fit a #10 Business size envelope and so I designed them to fit two announcements to an 8"x10" sheet and I could print them at home on my Canon PIXMA iP8720 Crafting Printer.

The longest part of the process was getting my daughter's approval on the photographs. But once she gave the thumbs up I started printing off the invites and trimming them down.

I loved being able to print these off at home and customize them to my style and what my daughter wanted. We printed a few sheets and even swapped out a couple of photos after seeing them. I then printed the address labels out and the return labels and we put them together to mail out!

So here is the finished version. I wish you could see how amazing they look printed out. And the weight of the Canon Brand Photo Paper Plus Glossy II 8"x10" paper was perfect.

 

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