Crooked no more: the end of the saga!

I only wasted about 50 sheets of cardstock and half an ink cartridge (oops!), but I figured out a way around my printer’s crooked habits.

See, I was printing a 5″x7″ invitation in a hurry (read: I had 5″x7″ envelopes, so that’s what size won!), so I cut up the paper to 5″x7″ and laid them in the printer tray.  Well, every. single. image. printed crooked.  WHAT?!  All that cutting, all that image manipulation for what?  Oh, yeah, a crooked result.  Not cool, yo!

I decided that I needed to try a few other things.  None of those things worked.  I couldn’t change a single setting to make it print properly.  So I gave in and opted to let my printer think about its actions for another evening.

With a new ream of cardstock and new envelopes (there’s a reason for this) I gave it another shot the next day.

But not before talking with Shivam.  Oh what a waste that was!

Anyhow, here’s how I solved the problem….

I bought new envelopes.  You might be thinking, “cool, new envelopes, but how does that make your printer pull the paper in straight?”

The answer is that it doesn’t.  But it allowed me to reformat  a few things so that I could easily print two invites per page prior to cutting them and not have to do much math.  Normally I’d go to the ends of the earth to make sure the measurements were perfect, but with a sickly grandpa, a thesis to finish, a baby shower cake to complete, and a husband to hug, I just didn’t have the time to spend–and my cousin needed these invites this week!

So, I eyeballed the design, crossed my fingers, and prayed that my ink cartridge would last long enough for me to print 36 of these invitations.

Luckily, the ink cartridge survived and I only ended up with ONE sheet of crooked printing!!  In my book, this is serious success after the previous day’s mountain of misprinted sheets!

So, if ever you are fighting your printer, you may not have the best answer, but with a little thinking-outside-the-box, you can trick it into submission just about every time!  Unless it’s out of ink–then you just need to hit up the office supply store.

**After this event is over, I will upload screen shots of how I edited the files, but in the event that the special person these invites are for hasn’t seen the invites yet, I’d like to respect that until I know for sure she has!