Kathleen Callanan
Recycled-Paper-Crafts.com
Thursday, 2:15 p.m.

7. SETUP CREW
This second group of people tasks is lots of fun and it is the one folks enjoy doing the most!

Let the head of your setup crew decide whether to use cloth tablecovers, paper table covers or placemats. Almost as important as the choice of foods is "how things look"! The use of Paper Crafts can greatly enhance the eye-appeal of your party. The head table can be treated to lacquer-like handmade napkin rings, while paper bands made with your PC specifically for the event can be placed around the flatware wrapped in the paper napkin for the other guests.

This crew should decide how many people will be seated at a table and can coordinate the printing of table tent name cards for each guest and pre-seat the guests, especially when the group exceeds 25 guests. Prepare both a seating list by table number and a list by alphabetical names. In the heat of the confusion, it will be easy to find their pre-assigned tables through the use of both lists and you can easily see how you can rearrange the seating at the last minute to accommodate an unexpected circumstance.

Here's how you can do this for a Birthday Party simply and colorfully using your own PC and the MS Paint program already contained in your Programs: Accessories.

• Find a cool graphic. For example: clip art symbolic of a birthday or a photo of the birthday honoree.
• Move that graphic to your PC desktop or somewhere you can easily find it.
• Make sure it is sized to about 150-200 pixels wide.
• Open MS Paint by going to Start: Accessories: MS Paint
• Click on FILE in the upper left-hand corner and then, click on OPEN. You will then see a location screen where you can locate your graphic, highlight it and click on the SAVE button. This will place your graphic inside MS PAINT to the exact dimensions of your graphic.
• Click on IMAGE in the upper tool bar and then, click on ATTRIBUTES. Set the width for 3.50 inches and the height for 2.50 inches. This will produce some white border around your graphic on the right hand side and on the bottom.
• Now you are ready to add a little color. I chose to add a wide red line around the entire white surface, followed by a narrower blue line inside the red border. To do this, click on the LINE icon symbol on the left, select your line width below and select the red color from the pallet. I repeated the same steps after selecting the blue color from the pallet. Next, I selected the INK BOTTLE icon symbol and place the cursor in the white space between my red and blue lines and left clicked. This poured blue ink into the space between the lines.
• Add some text by clicking on the A text icon symbol. Now place the cursor and drag diagonally to make a text box. You can select your font style and size from the drop down toolbar. If it does not appear, click on VIEW and turn on the TEXT TOOL BAR. If you wish to use different text sizes, just make separate text boxes for each style and size. Include some information that makes it specific to the event and the card will serve as a party favor as well.
• Add the Guest's name to the bottom of the tag and save as NAMECARD1.jpg or equivalent. Do not close the MS Paint program. Since we want to make a tent-like table name card, we will need to rotate the image 180 degrees and save it that way also.

• Click on IMAGE, then on ROTATE. Select 180 degrees. Save the rotated image as NAMECARD1-rot.jpg

• Now that you have saved the two images, click on EDIT and then on UNDO. Repeat that step until you are back to the card with no Guest name. Now add the second name, SAVE as before but under a different name such as NAMECARD2.jpg. ROTATE and SAVE as before. Continue to cycle through the names until you have made double cards for each Guest.
• Open your word processing program to a NEW file. Set your page margins to 0.25", landscape orientation, and in three column format.
• Your cursor will be active in the upper left hand corner of your page. Do a few hits on the ENTER button and reposition your cursor in the upper left. Then, click on INSERT, followed by PICTURE or GRAPHIC, from FILE. Select the upside-down image and past it in. Add one line space and insert the other graphic. You now have the two sides of the table tent name card prepared.
• Add both graphics for the second and third Guest in similar manner to columns 2 and columns 3 and save your page.
• You are now ready to print this out onto cardstock. Either 60 lb or 110 lb paper should work fine. Just cut them out and fold and you have beautiful table tent place cards that are a party favors as well!

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