Summer has finally arrived! Celebrate our nation's birthday with stars and stripes, flags or a traditional nautical theme. Create sassy note cards to keep in touch with friends over the long hot summer. Introduce your baby in style with one of our adorable birth announcements. And for our summer and fall brides, this month's Special Occasion section includes three gorgeous new wedding invitation designs complete with place cards, table cards and menu cards.

Fourth fun
Get the gang together for an Independence Day celebration over the long weekend. Go the distance with a full cookout and fireworks, or pull together a picnic and some water balloons.

For a simple and classic invitation, go anchors away with a nautical design on Mountaincow’s new A7 Two Tone Ivory/Midnight stationery. All the party details are written beneath a bold blue anchor in Benjamin Caps from Fonts & Graphics for Weddings in red, a patriotic contrast to the blue and ivory stationery. The same design is repeated on an Ivory menu, and an Ivory envelope liner adds distinction to the envelope.

It’s a grand ol’ flag – stuck in a cupcake! Our Platinum design features this cute image as the background of an A7 White invitation with Deep Red envelopes. We rotated the text so it climbs up the flagpole and added the rest of the party details aligned to the right at the bottom of the invitation. We used the Meegles font from Fonts & Graphics 3 for a fun, casual look. We duplicated the design for the White menu card with a taller candle on the cupcake.

Go dotty with our PrintingPress Extreme invitation. We added a blue and red dotted border and matching star on an A7 White card with a Deep Red envelope. We wrote the text in the Ryan font from Fonts & Graphics 3, and then used a floating text box to shape the text into a semi-circle so it would wrap around the star. We duplicated the same design on a White menu.

Welcome to the world
There’s a lot to do when the baby comes, so make the announcements fun and easy by choosing one of our adorable designs.

For a bold, flowery start, we added a simple pink bloom to the top of a White 4-bar card paired with Magenta envelopes. We added the baby’s stats in a contrasting green using the Charlotte font from Fonts & Graphics 2. We designed matching thank you notes for all your well wishers using White folded A2 cards and Magenta envelopes.

Tickled pink about your bundle of joy? Use 4-bar Scalloped Cotton Candy stationery with a cute peapod image. We added the baby’s info in the Charlotte font, aligned to the right. We created a matching set of thank you notes using the same image on folded A2 Scalloped Cotton Candy stationery. To make it even sweeter, we used Pink liners for the envelopes. Translate this design for your bouncing baby boy by printing it on Rock Candy Scalloped stationery and using Blue envelope liners.

If your new baby has you on Cloud 9, consider our PrintingPress Extreme airplane design with the baby’s name spelled in its wake. We used the Ryan font from Fonts & Graphics 3 for the details about the baby and put the baby’s nickname in a text box, shaping it into a curve to follow the plane’s flight. We printed the announcement on an A2 Scalloped Flat White card with Dusty Blue envelopes. We used a similar design for the thank you notes, printed on A2 Scalloped Folded White cards with Dusty Blue envelopes.

PrintingPress sample
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PrintingPress Platinum sample
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PrintingPress Extreme sample
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Tying the knot
Choosing a wedding invitation no longer means picking between white and ecru. Mountaincow’s newest color selections, like Evening Sky and Avocado, make it easy for you to find even more ways to translate your wedding’s personality into your invitations.

For a timeless wedding invitation, consider our shady tree design printed on A7 Two Tone Evening Sky stationery. The tree silhouette and the elegant font are made more contemporary with the bold color combination. For a truly traditional look, consider using Twilight Sky or Ivory stationery. We used the Alyssa Afternoon font from Fonts & Graphics for Weddings in a deep blue to match the tree and repeated the tree image and font on the 4-bar Evening Sky response card, the Twilight menu and place card. The table card was made from custom cut 6 x 6 inch Twilight stationery. We used Twilight liners for the invitation and reply envelopes.

For an elegant wedding, we added a sophisticated cherry blossom design across the top of A7 Café au Lait stationery with Deep Pink envelope liners. We used the Alyssa Afternoon font for the couple’s names in deep pink and Benjamin Caps from Fonts & Graphics for Weddings for the rest of the text in brown. Repeat the design for the reply card, menu, place card and custom cut table card. We used borderless printing to make the cherry branches print all the way to the edge of the stationery. For more information on borderless printing, see the November 2004 Tech Tip.

Use our PrintingPress Extreme design to create an invitation for a wedding with modern flair. Using a row of green dots as a design theme, we turned conventional style on its side by designing a landscape wedding invitation, flipping the ampersand, and making the menu card match the invite. We used Mountaincow’s new A7 Avocado stationery with Twilight liners to avoid the traditional matching look.

Movin' on up
The layering controls in PrintingPress Extreme allow you to organize multiple layers of floating objects. There are three layers within any card: the main text area, above the main text area, and below the main text area. When you click in a card and type, you are typing directly into the main text area of the card. You can add images into any of these layers:

1. The pink star is embedded in main text area
2. The green star is above the main text area
3. The orange star is behind the main text area

To float an object above the main text area, click on the Float Over Text button in the Design toolbar.  To float an object behind the main text area, click on the Float Behind Text button in the Design toolbar.  To "unfloat" a floating object and embed it within the main text, click whichever of the Float buttons is selected. These options can also be accessed in the Design menu.

You can adjust the front-to-back order of floating objects within each layer using the tools in the Alignment toolbar, which can also be accessed from the Object, Arrange menu. For example, to move an object in front of all other objects in its layer, click on the Move to Front button in the Alignment toolbar.

Note that when you change the front-to-back order of an object, it does not move the object to a different layer. Clicking on an object that is behind the main text area and clicking on Move to Front will not move the object in front of the main text area; it will just move the object in front of all other floating objects that are also behind the main text area.