Excellent
for "seed swappers", these handy seed
packets make good little gifts too. Personalise
a few for your gardening friends or make some of
your own and send seeds to pals. Over the years
I've developed a whole range of packets, with varying
degrees of success. I thought I'd share a few of
my ideas with you here!
Realistically
you need a little computing knowledge to do it -
it's not rocket science though! I used Paint Shop
Pro (which you can try for free - get it from www.download.com)
to create some of mine. You also need access to
a fairly good printer.
| To
start off - right click your mouse over
Figure 1 below and press "Save Image
As", then save the file to either your
hard disc or a floppy. Now you can open the
file seedblank.gif in Paint Shop Pro and decorate
it (see Figure 2 for example). The picture I
used on this one is a photo of my garden much
reduced in size, but sometimes I use clipart
that I have found on the net. |
Experiment with different sizes to get different
sized packets for different sizes or quantities
of seeds. To do this in Paint Shop Pro, open the
picture and click on "Image" and then
"Resize".
Now print the image and cut round it (cutting inside
the black lines).
Next fold and stick the packet (see Figure 3).
Turn the picture over so that it is underneath the
paper. Imagine the additional lines shown on Figure
3.
Fold Flap 1 along the black line to the right.
Fold Flap 3 along the line so it overlaps Flap 1.
Glue Flap 3 down. I use a Tippex glue stick for
the gluing.
Fold Flap 4 along the line upwards and glue it to
Flaps 1 and 3.
Now Fold Flap 2 downwards along the line.
You can either leave this open and glue it down
when you have put seeds in or buy a "Post It"
glue stick which dispenses resealable glue.
Here's
a few I prepared earlier:
If
you don't have the expertise or software to produce
the packets from this project as I've described
here, may I offer you a little cheat? Click
here and you can download a Word document with
a few ready-made designs. Important: This
file is large (over 3 megabytes), if you don't have
a fast internet connection it could take a fair
while to download - sorry but its necessary to keep
the file large in order to maintain good picture
quality for printing. If you open the document and
carefully click on any text you should get the whole
text portion of the packet selected and the little
Word Art Menu will pop up. Take the option "Edit
Text" and you will be able to replace the existing
wording with your own. On A4 paper you should get
2 packets on a page.
If
you get stuck at all or my instructions aren't clear
please email
me and I'll try to help.
Above
all - have fun!
Copyright
2001, Chris Evans
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