You heard a heartbreaking story about a tragic loss because an unconscious parent couldn’t notify fire fighters that there was a child in the home, and it made you think about the safety of your children and pets. What if you weren’t home when the house caught fire? What if you were knocked out like the mom with the child who died in the fire? You need a way to make sure this never happens to the people and pets you love, but how?

The answer is actually quite simple. What you need is a sign that announces that there are pets or children inside.

• VistaPrint makes a window sign that says “Baby on Board” that can be ordered without any alterations and applied to a front window or to the glass of the front door.
• If you have several children or your baby insists he or she is not a baby anymore, take a look at some of the many child care designs. You can customize one of them with your message that your children may be inside.
• For your four-legged family members, there are several pet designs that can easily be altered to announce that there are two dogs and a cat inside in need of assistance.

If you have a small business, VistaPrint’s return address labels offer a very cheap and effective way for you to promote your business. To turn these inexpensive address labels into a marketing tool, you may want to:

• Design labels that promote your business website and email address. Apply them to product packaging so people remember where they bought the items they are using when they need to restock.
• Use labels to personalize generic treat bags. Put a few samples and some candy in them to give away when you set up a table to promote your business at local events.
• Create a set of labels that offer promotional messages. For example, you could make labels that have your business name on the first line and a message that says, Buy one, get one free, or Store special: 50% off, on the next line.
• Use labels to make a quick and easy reward program for frequent buyers. Give customers a business card or make a special reward card. Every time they make a purchase, stick a label on the card. When they collect a certain number of labels, allow them to redeem their cards for a percentage off the next purchase or for a small free item.

You’ve got your first real job and you want everyone to know. Well, everyone except your Cousin Freddie, who would just want to borrow some money. You’ve decided to use Vista Print to create announcements about your new job, but now you need a few pointers to help you get started. To make a new job announcement you can be proud of, try these suggestions:

• Choose announcements that have a similar new beginnings theme. Business announcements and graduation announcements are both easily altered to make an announcement about a new job. Use the advanced editing feature to tweak the layout or change colors to make the design suit your theme and style.
• Coordinate your announcements to match your business cards and include a business card complete with your new title in the announcement envelopes. This way, doting friends and family members can refer to the card to get the title right when they are bragging to that kid who bullied you in school about how well you are doing.
• Consider shopping for coordinating letterhead paper, return address labels and other professional stationary needs at the same time. This way, you won’t have to struggle to remember which fonts or colors you used when you need these supplies at a later date.

You’ve decided you want to mold young minds and help the under five age group develop skills that will help them succeed in school. As you start your daycare or preschool business, you decide you needed a cheap and effective way to let people know about the new childcare operation. You are going to use VistaPrint to create custom business cards. Now, you aren’t quite sure how to proceed. Didn’t you hear that business cards should be simple and elegant? Actually, a daycare or preschool is one business that usually doesn’t want a sophisticated card. To make business cards for your child care business, you should:

• Look for a design template that is colorful and fun. VistaPrint has quite a few designs that are perfect for a child care, including cards with colorful sunflower images or graphics that look like a child’s crayon drawings.
• Keep the card uncluttered. Putting only the essential information on the front of the card makes it easy for prospective clients to read and makes you look like the professional you are.
• Use the back of the card for information that is important, but doesn’t belong on the front. For example, if you want to pitch your child care’s terrific school readiness program, you can do so here.

You’ve decided you want to mold young minds and help the under five age group develop skills that will help them succeed in school. As you start your daycare or preschool business, you decide you needed a cheap and effective way to let people know about the new childcare operation. You are going to use VistaPrint to create custom business cards. Now, you aren’t quite sure how to proceed. Didn’t you hear that business cards should be simple and elegant? Actually, a daycare or preschool is one business that usually doesn’t want a sophisticated card. To make business cards for your child care business, you should:

• Look for a design template that is colorful and fun. VistaPrint has quite a few designs that are perfect for a child care, including cards with colorful sunflower images or graphics that look like a child’s crayon drawings.
• Keep the card uncluttered. Putting only the essential information on the front of the card makes it easy for prospective clients to read and makes you look like the professional you are.
• Use the back of the card for information that is important, but doesn’t belong on the front. For example, if you want to pitch your child care’s terrific school readiness program, you can do so here.

As you plan a big birthday party for your child, you are slightly horrified at the expense. The thought of the postage fees alone is making you downright nauseous. Then, a money saving idea occurs to you. Birthday postcards would be a great way to cut down on postage costs, because sending a postcard is a bit cheaper than mailing a letter. Now, you just hope VistaPrint offers birthday postcards!

A quick keyword search for birthday brings up several pages of colorful templates for birthday themed postcards, from monkeys to pirates. A few simple changes to make sure the cards will hold all the party information may be necessary if you opt for a design that isn’t already set up as an invitation, but it will be a pretty easy alteration.

Be sure you remember all of the important information an invitation should include, such as when and where the party will take place. Also, if the invitation doesnt make the party theme obvious, you should mention it on the invitation in case some of the guests want to come in costume. This is especially important for a princess party or pirate theme, since many children will seize any opportunity to put on their costumes.

For more information about postcards and Vistaprint, please see our Homepage - Vistaprint.co.uk.

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You’ve seen the bumper stickers sold by the local schools that say, “My child is an honor roll student at XYZ Academy,” and you are secretly a bit envious. To be perfectly frank, your child may never qualify for an honor roll bumper sticker. He’s an amazingly sweet and helpful kid and plays the tuba like an angel, but school work is a struggle. As you pull into the school parking lot with your squeaky clean minivan that is unmarred by bumper stickers, you notice that the cars on either side of you are so covered in stickers touting their straight “A” kids that you can’t actually tell what color the cars are! That’s it. You’re going straight home, hopping onto VistaPrint and seeing if you can find some kind of custom printing option for your car. Window decals? Perfect!

Window decals can be designed to say anything you want and are a great option for parents who are proud of their kids for things other than their grades. Why not design a decal that says, “My kid won the local track meet finals,” or, “My kid raised money for new playground equipment for ABC Park,” to celebrate how great your child is in other ways?

For more information about Window decals and Vistaprint, please see our Homepage - Vistaprint.co.uk.

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You like color. No, you love color. Your home has orange walls, brick red walls and even a few lemon yellow walls. Your business has purple and hot pink walls. People love all that color and you’ve decided to bring your vibrant palette to the online world. Your business website is not going to be like all those blue, gray and muted green websites everyone else has. You can’t wait for the customer compliments to begin.

You barely have the site up and running when the first call comes in. Unfortunately, instead of heaping praise, the customer tells you the site is hard to read. A second customer strolls in the door and tells you that while he loves the store, the colors on the site are so bright he actually developed a migraine. Wait a second. You used the same exact color shades on the site. What is going on here? There are several reasons your customers could be objecting to your bright hues:

• Different browsers interpret the same color differently. A nice pale yellow site may appear garishly yellow on one browser and greenish on another.
• Monitors are hard on our eyes when we read black text on a white background. Throwing hard to read colors into the mix increases eye strain.
• People simply have different tastes. What appeals to you may be unattractive to someone else. Since the customer is always right, it is better to have a business site with neutral colors.

You’ve got three different meetings two conference calls and four progress reports scheduled and that is just for the morning. You’re simply too busy to take time out to sign the 21 letters and memos you’ve asked your assistant to type up for you, but they have to get in the mail. It isn’t like they are binding contracts that need your signature to be notarised, but you can’t exactly give your assistant the go ahead to forge your signature. You need a solution better than your current one, which is to eat a few stale crackers with one hand as you sign away your lunch hour with the other. You mention this to your assistant and, within minutes, you are looking at VistaPrint’s option for ordering signature stamps.

To create a signature stamp, you will need to scan a copy of your signature into your computer, adjust the scanned signature so that it will be able to fit within the space on the stamp, save it as a pdf file and upload it following VistaPrint’s instructions. You may want to consider ordering the stamp with optional text, such as your name printed below the signature. If you are going to be using your new stamp heavily, you may also want to buy some extra ink pads at the same time.

For more information about signature stamps and Vistaprint, please see our Homepage - Vistaprint.co.uk.

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You open your address book and gasp in horror. You’re sure you only had a dozen people to send Christmas cards to, but your book has a good 50 names in it. The dandelions don’t spread on your lawn as fast as those addresses of people you need to send cards to multiply! New business acquaintances, parents of your children’s school friends and your old college buddies all need to be remembered over the holidays, but you really don’t want to have to trade in the second car to be able to afford your postage costs! Can you send holiday postcards instead?

Holiday postcards are a great idea for people who need to send a large quantity of cards for a number of reasons. Postage is cheaper, which is always a nice thing. In addition, they are a greener option because they use less paper than cards and don’t need envelopes. This can be an important thing in todays eco-friendly environment. However, sending postcards on holidays certainly isn’t a new option. Many people collect vintage postcards from a hundred years ago. Perhaps in another hundred years, your great-great grandchildren will be laughing over the silly outfits on your photo postcards.

For more information about postcards and Vistaprint, please see our Homepage - Vistaprint.co.uk.

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