How to Make Greeting Cards in OpenOffice
By Katherine Harder
Create personalized, one-of-a-kind greeting cards and you'll only spend money on paper and ink. Even better, by using the graphics components installed with Open Office, the free software suite for home or business, you don't even need expensive home office software to complete the task. Your homemade greeting card will communicate to the recipient that you spent time and effort on their card instead of choosing a random card off the greeting card racks.
Open up your Open Office software, and select the drawing program. Visualize the blank digital page laid out before you as bisected vertically and horizontally; this is where you'll be folding the paper to create your greeting card. The front of your card is on the bottom right, the back is bottom left, the left side of the card's interior is top right of the card's interior and the top left is the right.
Click on the menu bar at the top of the program, and then select "View." Select "Toolbars" then "Drawing" to expose the drawing toolbar. Click on the "T" on the toolbar; this is the text tool.
Open a text box in the right bottom section you earlier identified as the front of the card. Write the greeting you want to use for your card's front. Change the text font, size, alignment and color as desired using the formatting toolbar directly above the page you have opened. Add text to the left bottom section, if you want text on your card's back.
Add appropriate text to the upper right and left sections that will be the interior of your card. Click on the "Select" tool on the drawing toolbar, and then right click the text box you just created. Choose "Position and Size" from the resulting menu, and then choose "Rotate." Enter 180 into the "Rotation angle" box to flip your text box upside down. Repeat for the box in the other section.
Add any of the shapes from the drawing toolbar to your card, remembering to rotate the ones you place in the top two sections. Change any image's size by grabbing one of the four boxes that appear at the image's corners and dragging them outward.
Add photos by clicking on the "Insert picture from file" tool found on the drawing toolbar. Format and rotate them the way you would other images.
Click on "File" at the top of your program, and then hit "Print." Fold your paper in half both ways, using your placement of text and images to tell you what direction to fold.
Tips
- For your DIY greeting cards, use envelopes with these dimensions or slightly larger: 4 3/8 inches by 5 3/8 inches.
Writer Bio
Katherine Harder kicked off her writing career in 1999 in the San Antonio magazine "Xeriscapes." She's since worked many freelance gigs. Harder also ghostwrites for blogs and websites. She is the proud owner of a (surprisingly useful) Bachelor of Arts in English from Texas State University.