Saturday, September 6, 2014

My Other Strange Addiction



Before I got hooked on creating custom cards, I started having some custom mats made. I had had a couple made years ago, but I was ready for some new ones. My initial order was four. Then I was so happy with how those turned out, I had another three made (although one was for someone else). I was particularly pleased with the one pictured above, although all of them turned out just as nice.

If you are interested in having one made, I can highly recommend InkedPlaymats.com. They charge $24.99 apiece. Shipping is about $10 for two. If your order goes over $50, though, shipping is free. Hence the reason I ordered three on my second order.

The key to getting good results is to start with a really large original image, at least 1024x768. When searching on Google, I like to use the Search Tools option and set the size to >=1024x768. Anything smaller than that is going to look slightly fuzzy when it is resized to the desired size of 3675 x 2175. I used Paint Shop Pro to crop and resize the images, but there are any number of other options available if you don't have Photoshop.

Below are the images I used to have mats made, along with links to the full-sized images, for anyone who wants to make their own copy of one of mine. I highly recommend that you make one that is all your own, though.















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