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July 18, 2007

Creating Ancestor Cards for Children

A lot of people wrote to ask me what program I used to make the Ancestor Cards for my grandchildren. I tried a few different ones before settling on Excel. Each card that I created is 6x9 cm. (about 2.5x3.5 inches). I wanted to make sure the cards were not bigger than a baseball or hockey card so that I could buy a binder with plastic inserts and slots to hold the cards when complete.

I created 6 rectangle cells in Excel to the size I wanted, and saved 2 copies - one for the front (photos) and one for the back (text). Then I inserted the photos I wanted, cropped them if needed, and formatted them to the size I needed. I could have sized them first in something like Irfanview (a free graphic program) and then inserted them into Excel. Play with it, have fun, see what you can come up with!

I tried Picassa (a free download from Google) and Word, both printed beautifully but I had trouble lining up my back text with the photos on the front. Picassa prints beautifully, and you can automatically shrink the photos you use to fit the size card you want to make. It much easier and faster than Excel.

If you are more familiar with Word or Picassa than I am, perhaps you can make it work for you. You could also make each card slightly smaller so you get 9 cards on each sheet instead of 6. If you come up with a better method than I used, please let me know!


2 comments:

Libby Myers said...

Found your site while doing research for my boss on her blog entry for today, about genealogy online This card is a really great idea, I'm going to link to it on the comment section. Thanks!

http://www.reginalewis.com/2007/07/30/filling-in-the-family-tree-online-dr

Libby Myers
ReginaLewis.com

Anonymous said...

You could also get the perforated business cards at an office supply store. They are usually 10 to a page and you can easily print on both front and back before separating them. Just print one side first and then turn it over and print the other side! Often you can get the cards in more than just white if you prefer.

You can also still use the binder idea, and get the plastic pages for business cards...just slide your cards into them and there you go!