Hi, everyone! Just thought I'd share this with anyone interested!

Vistaprint is a website that lets the consumer design their own
business cards, postcards, pens, posters, t-shirts, window clings, etc.
They also offer free caricature design that can be used on pretty much
any product. What you do is create a little avatar/caricature face of
each person in your family, including animals, and use the design on
mailing labels and such. Well, I was messing around with it today and
I noticed that they have ferret caricatures (among MANY other animal
choices like reptiles, birds, fish, horses, cows, and more). You can
even change the color of the ferret's fur! Then, you save your
caricature family and you can use it on anything you want. The company
offers to put the design on their products, but I just copy the design
and save it to my computer to use it on items I can print on like
envelopes. Here's the link:

<http://www.vistaprint.com/vp/ns/caricatures/editor/choose_type.aspx?xnav=TsrItem>

And here's a link to what my caricatures look like:
<http://s180.photobucket.com/albums/x313/china_cat84/?action=view&current=Caricatures2.jpg>

Where is the ferret? Well, that did take some "ferreting" out (he he
couldn't resist!) so here's how to get the ferret caricature:

1. Click link above
(http://www.vistaprint.com/vp/ns/caricatures/editor/choose_type.aspx?xnav=TsrItem)

2. Click on "Other" category (the one with the cow)

3. Then you should see a whole bunch of animals pop up. The ferret is
in the 3rd row from the top on the left end. You can customize the way
he looks and everything - but not as much as you can for dogs and cats,
unfortunately.

4. Now, if you want to create a family caricature like mine
(http://s180.photobucket.com/albums/x313/china_cat84/?action=view&current=Caricatures2.jpg)
then you just do the same thing for every member of your family. Make
sure you name them (you enter the name on the left hand side of the
screen, underneath the preview of the caricature) and when you're done
you can rearrange the order of the caricatures.

If you ONLY want the caricatures and do NOT want to buy them printed on
a product by vistaprint, here is what you do:

1. After all the caricatures are created, named, and ordered exactly
the way you want, scroll the page so that they're in the center of the
screen.

2. Do a Print Screen (see your computer manual on how to do this if you
are not familiar - every computer is different. Mine just lets me press
the Prnt Scrn button but some computers require you to hold the control
key too) which will copy your ENTIRE screen.

3. Open up an application like Paint and paste your print screen copy
into the program.

4. Click on "image" in the toolbar, then click Crop.

5. Use the crop tool to crop out everything BUT the caricatures and
their names.

6. Push Ctrl+C at the same time to copy the caricatures. Click "file"
in the toolbar, then "new". Save only if you want to.

7. Paste the caricatures into the program again, except this time the
whole print screen copy won't paste, just the caricatures.

8. You can adjust the size of the canvas (white space where image
pasted to) to fit more closely to the image. It looks cleaner this way.

9. Save image as a .jpeg, .jpg, or .gif file and then you can use it
in microsoft word (or any other similar program) to make cute labels,
envelopes, letterheads, etc. If you need inspiration, you can look at
the caricature products available on vistaprint's website to see how
they used the design.

Just thought I'd share this because it's fun to do, involves ferrets,
and is possibly a great idea for shelters to make their own (cheaper!)
stationary, business cards, etc. (Maybe do a caricature of people who
work/volunteer and a couple mascot ferrets or something?). Have fun!

Steve Melissa Vylet Cricket Otis

"Families are like fudge - mostly sweet with a few nuts." ~Author
Unknown

[Posted in FML 6576]