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Customized Halloween Party
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My two sons have birthdays on either side of Halloween, and for 8 years, we have hosted a big Halloween birthday party. The boys invite about 40 friends and in lieu of gifts, we ask the guests to bring food for the local Thanksgiving Food Drive. One of the fun elements of the party for me is designing the invitations, address labels, thank you notes and other party necessities. Keeping 40 kids happy and busy for 2 hours is a fresh challenge every year. Last year, we revamped the activities, grouped the kids into teams and challenged them to win the "Holler Cauldron" - inspired by the Stanley Cup! Each team worked together, moving through a series of activities. The team that had the most points at the end won the championship and the right to have their names affixed to the golden Holler Cauldron plate. We continued the competition this year and the party was another big success. Plus, we raised $425 and 412 pounds of food for the Food Pantry! Over the years, I have been inspired to make invitations by using all of the holiday decorations around me. I've scanned in Halloween paper plates, greeting cards, window stickers and more. This year, I didn't have a lot of time to create the invitation, so I did a search on my favorite stock website, Istockphoto.com and purchased a great mummy illustration. The images are very inexpensive, and they have a huge selection contributed by artists and photographers from all over the world. I placed the illustration on the front of the invitation and added the wording in a great font for Halloween called Hohenstaufen. Then I used Graphics-Toolbox's Irregular Frame tool and selected one of the bats and resized it for the inside cover. I created a watermark bat for behind the list on the back cover and chose another bat and pasted into Word to create the return address label. The 2008 Certificates to the team winners were easily created using the mummy image, the same Halloween font and the signature Holler Cauldron created last year. |
This is a typical example of how computer users can create their own personalized invitations and coordinating elements to fit the themes of their events and save money too! The final effect looks professional, but is cheaper than generic stationary items, reflects your own style and becomes a lasting keepsake.
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Graphics-Toolbox® was created by a team of software designers with over 20 years experience in graphics programming. We discovered, that most other software programs, being used for graphics, were designed for other uses. For instance, Adobe Photoshop is an excellent photo-editing program, but a lot of people over the years, have had to use it as a general graphics manipulation/design package. They didn't have better options. Graphics Toolbox was designed as a real alternative to Photoshop for all non-photo effects, graphics needs. We created an extensive range of very easy to understand and use graphics tools, for the world's daily graphic needs. The other problem with other graphics software packages is that they were not designed from day one to keep things simple for the end users. Then as new programming was built upon the original design, the functions became more and more complicated for everyone other than professionally trained designers. For the rest of us, these other programs are difficult to learn and awkward to use. We believe that Graphics-Toolbox will quickly become your main graphics editing software tool and look forward to receiving your comments. |
Project Based Learning Kits and Graphics-Toolbox software were created by a team of designers with over 20 years of experience in graphics design and programming and a team of passionate and ambitious teachers. With the Common Core Learning Standards (CCLS) being implemented across the nation, these core learning standards were created in order to instill in students deep thinking, critical analysis, and creative problem-solving skills. Our Common Core Learning Project Kits are an essential tool to add to your academic toolbox. These project based learning kits are the key to helping teachers add rigor into project based education, meet the Common Core Learning Standards, engage their students in learning, improve student assessment, incorporate valuable technology, and publish students work in a variety of relevant formats. Educators are very excited about these units because all kits contain:
As you engage your students in learning with Project Based Learning Kits, you can be confident that you are aligning your curriculum with the standards that are expected of all grades across our nation, that you are offering rigorous differentiated learning opportunities, and that you are providing your students with 21st century instructional technology. You can also take advantage of these great student projects to compile dynamic visuals for hall bulletin boards and school websites. They are a great way to showcase students’ work, showing parents, administrators and colleagues how effective of a teacher you are! Inspiring students to incorporate relevant technology and learn to present their perspectives in formats that will be valuable for future classes and adult careers is fundamental to the goals and principles of the Common Core and Core Curriculum Standards and we are happy to help support that initiative. |