How To Get The Best Printed Results For Your Printables and Photos

Welcome to The Cherry On Top.

As you may know, I recently opened a shop together with Paty Greif Digital Designer called, Kreative Design Studio.  We are selling lovely printables of all kinds as well as kits and templates for both traditional and digital scrapbookers.  Take a browse and see what you can add to your scrap stash.

Since printables are our main thing, for the time being, I wanted to blog about ways to get the best results with your printables.  There are so many variables into printing.  I didn't really think about it all that much until I started designing my own designs and printing them.

Read through our blog for tips and tricks and make sure you are getting the best results from your printer.

Above I did a pocket scrap using our planner printables, Hello, Winter.  That's right!  I scrapbooked, traditionally with printable planner sheets.  You can use these for so many things.  Punch a hole and use those nifty journal cards as tags for your gifts.  Make a beautiful banner with them.  If you're savvy enough, you can use a lot of the goodies, digitally, too!

To get my sizes just right, for the layout above, I used the journal card as a template and traced around my photo with a grease pen.  I have a white and black grease pen.  They work totally awesome for getting those photos cropped up just right.  Simply rub off the pencil with a tissue.

Matting always makes your pages pop.  I matted most of the goodies and photos and used the tapes or borders for extra interest.  Take a close look at my tapes.  Especially, the scalloped, polka dot one.  Notice those white edges?

That is often a problem with printables, but there are solutions.  

*You can ink around the edges to cover the white.  

*You can use a nail file and go around your print out, gently pushing at the edges to give this effect all around your piece. I thought the kind of worn look looked pretty good.  Just make sure you do it in a few places for consistency.

*Printing on sticker paper works really, really well in preventing these white edges.

*Use paper with a gloss or semi gloss for the best results.  Take a look at my red and blue ribbons with the picture of my pa-la.  (Father-in-law hehehe...) Look how crisp the colour is and that there was NO loss of colour even after cutting around all of the edges.  My paper was not thick.  Just a slightly heavy weight and geared for coloured printing paper.  Specifically, this is Xerox, Colotech+ 100g/m2.  

The difference is pretty staggering when it comes to print quality.

Apparently ink jet printers are NOT the way to go for good quality printing, including photos.  I use a Brother, laser printer and I'm fairly satisfied with the results.  With a laser printer, you'll get a lot more pages with your ink.  The ink never dries and therefore, doesn't smear easily either.  Huge pluses when it comes to printing printables and photos.  Though you may want to wait before utilising what you've just printed.

It is recommended that you use the same paper and ink as the brand name of your printer.  Especially, if it is NOT a laser printer.  You certainly should consider that matching your printer ink and paper will most likely give you a top print out, but you only need to do this for really important photos and printables.  If you don't need THE BEST result, go with any kind of photo paper.

For photos, you definitely should use a good quality photo paper.  If you can't find paper to match your printer, go with Kodak.  Your photos will last a lot longer. 

Papers that are acid and lignin free will give you super results in the quality of your image as well as add to the life span of your colour.  Don't forget to let your print outs dry.  Especially, your photos.  It's recommended to let them dry 12-24 hours before handling.  Surly a good tip for ink jets.

Putting your printouts behind glass and in albums will make them last a lot longer.  Keep them stored in a dry, even environment.  The temperature should remain consistent throughout the year for the best results.

If you are using something beside normal or standard printing paper, check your settings.  Printers often give you choices in the kind of paper you are printing on.  You might also have a choice in the quality you want to print in.  Choose best if that's what you want.

You may want to test your print out on regular printer paper before putting it on more expensive paper.

Here's a photo of our printable bottle tie tags.  What a cute way to dress up and give your bottle of wine.  They are just .99 cents in our shop.  You get 5 different ties and of course, you can print them out as much as you like as long as it is for your own personal use.  They'd make cute photo props, too.

This is an example of our Hello, Winter ornaments.  Though we use jpg on most of our printables, we do use 300 dpi to ensure a good quality image.  They are also just .99 cents.  We've got a blog dedicated to these with a step by step tutorial.  Click here to see it.

Our printable card making kit came out just tops!  Look at that bright clarity and just .99 cents!

I hope you got some handy tips for printing your printables and photos.  If we forgot something, share in the comments.

Make sure you take a visit to our new shop and try out these tricks on your pribtables.

Happy crafting!