Bookmarks for Pentecost

 Bookmarks are one of my favorite projects that can be made with a printer (preferably inkjet; the quality is far superior, in my experience). You can use them as inserts in bulletins on special occasions; folks seem consistently happy and surprised to find them there. All you'll need is card stock (I like the thickness of photo paper, matte finish on both sides), a self-healing mat, an X-Acto knife, and a cutting rail. Start by figuring out how many you can fit on one side; I went with five bookmarks at 2" by 8" each with 1/8" between each one. The image, by the way, is one of the long, narrow stained glass windows at St. Peter's; their shape is very conducive to being a design element for bookmarks!

 On the reverse side I started with a field of red and added the text. I'm not aware of a consumer-grade printer that is capable of producing 2-sided documents with perfect registration, so this is how I get around making the project less unforgiving in the cutting-out process.

 I invested in a small cutting rail and self-healing mat that will fit easily in a laptop case or backpack.

 A handy trick is to paint the cap of your X-Acto knife with nail polish; you don't want it disappearing on you, leaving you with a bare, dangerous blade.

 Place the sheet of bookmarks, face up, on the self-healing mat. Lie the cutting rail on it with just the tiniest amount of the image showing. Make sure your blade is sharp…

 …and start cutting them out. I like to leave the white part intact; it gives the remaining sheet more integrity as you go, and leaves less bits and pieces of paper all over the place.

 Here's how it looks on the reverse. Plan ahead for upcoming holidays and special occasions; one parishioner mentioned he'd like to have TWO, one for the hymnal, one for the Book of Common Prayer. That might be a bit more than this bookmark factory can handle!

Calendars: A Year's Worth of Cheap Advertising

I really like coming up with new projects to make with our copier. This one took nothing more than a pack of card stock and about an hour to figure out the layout. The resultant calendar went into everybody's bulletins one Sunday at St. Peter's, and the fact that none of them made their way into the paper recycling bin tells me that they are hopefully posted on bulletin boards and refrigerators all over town for all to see. 

I started with photos of some of our stained glass windows (one of the church's best features IMHO). Finding the calendar grid was easy; if you do a Google image search with the word "calendar" and the year, you'll get a lot of results in all sorts of colors and fonts. This is the one we used:

Coming up with the "Holidays and Observances" section was a little trickier. I consulted with folks more "in the know" than me to determine which dates should go into this section (including the Feast Day of St. Peter, for whom our church is named): 

You'll also want to include your church's contact information, just in case somebody does happen to see this calendar posted someplace and finds it intriguing. The final product was printed on card stock to give it some durability. As I write and post this, it's a bit early to start actually producing next year's calendar, but it's never too early to start planning ahead for next year's graphic!