From Template to Announcement

Have you ever wanted to create a fast, yet professional looking announcement for a special event? Consider taking one of the MMS popular templates and modifying it to work for you! A friend of mine needed a Baby Announcement and asked me to help. So we we looked through some of the artwork I had on My Memories Suite and she liked the colors and styles of the "My ABC Album" by the Ettes & Company. Remember, everything in a template set is in layers, so flowers (girl stuff), monograms and photo placement can all be removed or changed. If you can see past the original designs, you'll be amazed at all the creative things you can do with a template set.

Instructions:

1. When opening your template set you probably don't need all 30 pages, so select the "Create Template from Designer Template" option. But before clicking "Continue", click on the "Custom Page Arrangement" button next to the template image. This will show you all the pages in that template set (one of my favorite features by the way). Since I only needed one of the pages, I selected the "H" page and dragged it into the box below and clicked "Continue"...that way only the page or pages I've selected will open in MMS.



2. Since we wanted to print the announcements at our local store (Walmart or Sam's Club are among my first choices), I had to change the "Square layout" in to a "Portrait layout" . You can do this clicking on the top "Edit" menu and then selecting "Change Album Shape". You'll notice some of the page components shift (or center) and you'll need to adjust them until you get the desired look. (Tip: Sometimes I find it's easier to "Group" multiple components of the layout, move them and then "Ungroup" them if needed. To do this, simple select the top "Arrange" menu and select the group/ungroup option.)

3. Once I moved everything where I needed it, I dropped in my perfectly precious photograph. As you can tell I removed the original monogram letter and replaced it with a "d" for Davis and added in the remaining text I needed.

4. After you've finished your photograph then print them out at home or I uploaded them to Sam's Club photo center and my friend had these printed out on 5" x 7" photographs.



Bonus Idea: My friend wanted to include a quarter sheet, quick and easy invite to a baby blessing. So I opened a new album and created a landscape page from scratch. I then output it as a JPG file and dropped it into my Word document so I could print 4-up on a page. With the papers and embellishments from the ABC Album Template I threw this invite together in about 15 minutes.