The Ultimate Guide to DIY Custom Printing at Home

If you’ve been putting your home printer through its paces, good for you! You probably know what a clever little gadget it is, and how very useful it can be! But if your printer is only occasionally used to print out a receipt here or maybe a letter there, you might not have discovered its full potential just yet. There are so many DIY custom printing projects you can accomplish using nothing but your trusty printer. Not only can you make yourself truly personalized stationery, invites and so on, you can create custom printed fabrics and t-shirts, wall décor, and even create DIY screen printing effects! Here are some ideas and some inspiration to help you get started:

Custom Printing for the Home

You’re probably using your printer to do this already: printing invites to special occasions, printing personalized greetings, gift tags and even the occasional special photo which you may want to frame or put up on the wall or fridge. But did you know you can also custom print these:

• Custom t shirts such as these Valentine Day shirts – ideas and printing tips. These are bound to give you some fun ideas for the next time you have to think up some ideas for that special day
• Then there is wall art! You can get really creative here with family photos, wall collages, photos broken up and pieced together like jigsaw pieces, classic art prints, inspirational quotes, still life…. Truly the possibilities are endless!
• You can also print out some fun party props – banners, paper napkins, cardboard cutouts, bingo cards or dart boards for games, coasters, table placement cards and anything else that your imagination can come up with.

You can experiment with various print materials such as card paper, photo paper, poster paper, canvas and so on. You can also add various effects to the images you plan to print out, the distressed look, vintage or sepia tint, or transform images into arty looking monochrome (black and white) or even add text and merge pictures to create a collage.

Custom Printing for the Office

You currently use your office printer for the usual document printing: letters, receipts, invoices, reminders, memos and so on. But there is so much more you can do with it:

• You can print out promotional material for clients or customers – special deals or package offers, menus or rate lists and so on
• You could also print out product tags or special messages to go with special products
• You can print out posters for the office as well – they could be pretty and soothing landscapes, classic art, inspirational quotes or sayings from great personalities and so forth
• If your office décor is more contemporary and modern you could opt for some edgier, urban wall art featuring city-scapes, stark graffiti and so on.
• You could also announce bonuses for targets set and achieved via printouts and print out pictures of outstanding employees to increase motivation. Perhaps you could also hand out personalized printed certificates of appreciation from time to time.

Experiment with premium papers, and other processes such as foil stamping, lamination or specialized coatings, framing or mounting to create more impressive results. If you want some more ideas to get the creative juices going, you may want to check out some of these custom print ideas at Etsy.

Our Special July Coupon Code

Now that the creative juices are flowing, did you start worrying about printing costs; thinking along the lines of too many ideas too little ink? We understand; sometimes printing projects like these can use up a lot of ink and we do urge you to print responsibly.

To show our appreciation to our readers, we have a special promotional discount to offer you: take $5 off on all order values of $55 and up + get a 4th Of July Tote Bag & Shipping absolutely free! So don’t forget to use coupon code CIBAG5 all this month till 07/31/2015 midnight (PST).

Do you totes want this deal?

And if you would like to share some of your custom printing ideas and any experiences that you have had with your own DIY print projects, why not share those with us in the comments below or via our Facebook and Twitter pages!