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!

Our Newsletter's Latest issuu (er, Issue)

One of my favorite monthly projects is doing the layout for St. Peter's newsletter, The Keys. Both the newsletter's editor (named Peter, appropriately) and I have backgrounds in journalism and mass communications; I think this contributes in a big way to our enthusiasm for producing the newsletter. There's no other way to explain our eagerness to knock out an issue the day after Holy Week ended! 

A few months ago, I thought I'd look at other churches' newsletters for inspiration, and decided I'd start at the top with Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. One thing that stood out to me was the method they use for displaying issues of their newsletter: the digital publishing service issuu.com. Within a few minutes I set up a free account for St. Peter's and started filling a "shelf." We still have a page with the last year's worth of The Keys in pdf form, but I must admit to preferring the e-book format over pdf's. I guess I'm easily amused; I still find "flipping" the pages an almost hypnotic experience.

I hope you'll give this month's fool-themed "issuu" a look! Last month's theme was wind. I'm looking forward to hearing from Peter what next month's theme will be! Stay tuned…

New Nametags for Easter

A few weeks ago, I had the idea of making new nametags for everyone for Easter (125 tags, for starts). The old ones featured one of my least favorite fonts (Papyrus) and a very flat-looking version of the Episcopal shield. The new version features the font Keep Calm (from "Keep Calm and Carry On" and all the memes inspired by it), and a more 3D-looking version of the shield, which can be found here. On a table nearby the nametag kiosk is a clipboard loaded with a few of these forms:

In hindsight, swapping out all the nametags at Easter was probably a risky endeavor; I would have felt really bad if I'd missed anybody. However, I made a list of all the tags I'd made and showed them to "regulars" who know everybody, even the "C&E's" (folks who only show up on Christmas & Easter). I kept all the old tags nearby in a box, just in case I did miss anybody (and if my error was especially egregious, I was there on Easter with the laminator on standby). So far, the feedback on the new tags has been positive (for which I'm very thankful!).

Please check in…

For a year, I wrote about my hobby; now I'm going to take a crack at writing about my work. I am the Parish Administrator at St. Peter's Episcopal Church in Redwood City (in Silicon Valley), California. None of the folks I work with know I've started this blog, and I'm not sure what they'd think about it. My intent isn't to use "Publish or Parish" as an outlet to whine about my job; I'm going to rigidly adhere to the somewhat crass phrase "Don't sh!t where you eat." My purpose is to tell you about solutions I've found to challenges that have mostly been the result of my coming into being a Parish Administrator knowing next-to-nothing about the Episcopal Church, and to spread the word about any little hints and tricks I've found that have helped me on the job.

One of the first things I decided I wanted to take on that wasn't in my job description was maintenance of the church's Facebook wall. It hadn't been updated in months, and I know firsthand what a great tool Facebook is for getting the word out on the cheap (I've produced a few plays for community theater). I started by putting this sign together:

It lives in a matching blue-stained wood frame and is one of the first things you see when you walk in the door at St. Peter's. I can't honestly say it's made a huge difference in our number of check-in's, but we've gained a few more "Likes" since it's been on display. 

The above graphic has also served as filler in our monthly newsletter, The Keys of St. Peter (it renders well in black and white). I may redo the layout to include a QR code one of these days. I'd be curious to hear what you've done to encourage people to "Like" your Facebook page; comments are welcome and appreciated (and moderated; after doing a daily blog for a year I know what sort of spam to expect)!