This spring the boys are playing soccer again and Hubby is their coach. He wasn't planning on coaching, but had to step in at the last minute due to a coaching shortage. The team decided to name themselves the Speedy Turtles. As soon as they had a team name I was off creating their logo (I couldn't help myself). I found the perfect turtle image and then added the soccer balls. Of course once I created the logo I really didn't have a use for it until the end-of-season treats. Then after seeing the badges my work made for all the kids on Take Your Kids to Work Day I got the idea to make luggage tags for the players to tie to their soccer bags. After creating the design for the tags it was time to call in the professionals. I turned to my copy center at work, which also takes on personal jobs and does amazing work. They mounted the tag images on heavy card stock and then laminated them and punched the holes. For those of you who don't have a copy center at work, I am sure this is something (at least the lamination part) that Kinko's can handle for you. The cost of the tags came out to $0.50 each, I couldn't believe how cheap it was. Both the kids and parents loved the tags!
I usually get a lot of questions on what software I use to create my images. To create the above tags I used Google image search to find tow images: the turtle with the rocket and the soccer ball. The turtle image didn't need any clean up, but for the soccer ball image I had to remove the white background. To do this I used Photoshop's magic wand to select the white background and then delete it, so I was left with just the soccer ball on a transparent background. If you don't have Photoshop, but do have some other photo editing software then chances are you can remove the white background. To put the images together with the lettering I use Adobe Illustrator, but if you don't have that then you can also do this easily with Microsoft Powerpoint or Word. If I don't need to do anything special I usually turn to Powerpoint because it is easy and fast to use. The latest version is surprisingly powerful, so don't be shy to give it a try!
