How to make a letter sounds mouse pad on Vistaprint

Do you ever have an idea kicking around in your head for ages, but just aren’t sure how to go about making it happen?  At school, my kids use some ugly cartoon mouse pads that the computer teacher gave me. I kept thinking to myself, ‘What if I could make these more functional?’  My kids do all sorts of word work on the computer, and they need easy letter-sound assistance.  Well, this summer I finally figured it out, with this letter sounds mouse pad.

I started by creating a slide in PowerPoint and turned that into a JPEG.  I created two different options for the tricky letter X.

Making the Letter Sounds Mouse Pad

Costco is normally my go-to when I need to print pictures or for any other small projects I have.  I started out by using their website, but they wouldn’t give me a preview of the letter sounds mouse pad before I ordered it.  Their price is definitely cheaper, but I will pay more to make sure that what I see is what I get, and that’s why I went over to vistaprint.com  

There may be other printing websites that work just as well, but for this blog post, I’ll show you what I did on the Vistaprint website. When I first arrived at the site, I couldn’t find a mouse pad listed anywhere in the drop-down menus, so I typed it into the search bar.

It immediately took me to this screen, and I selected the option to upload my own complete design.

I clicked on the “My Computer” button and added the file from the place I had saved it on my computer. I normally save everything on the desktop that I am currently working on, and then I “file” the things away when I am done with my project.

What I love about Vistaprint is that they let you see the preview ahead of time, and they provide you with guidelines to work within.  When you upload my design, it may indicate that it is slightly outside the safety lines, but it will be fine once you reach the next screen.

It took me a lot longer than I would like to admit to get the sizing right and ensure that the graphics were large enough to avoid blurring.  Through trial and error, and a couple of hours later, I had this final design to approve.

Once I approved it, I went to my cart to complete the payment.  One of my co-workers told me about a Chrome plug-in called Honey. Have you guys heard of it?  All you have to do is go to the Chrome Web Store (or simply Google – I used the Honey Chrome plug-in, for example).  You click the “Add to Chrome” button, and after it is installed, you get a small icon next to your web browser’s address bar.

When checking out on any website, you can click on the little icon, and it will display all the coupon codes it can find on the Internet to help you save money.  It’s a little hard to see, but in the next photo, I pointed out where the Honey extension usually shows up on my screen.

After I clicked on my Honey extension, I found a coupon for 50% off!!!! Vistaprint always has some good deals, which is another reason I like ordering through them.  After I ordered it, I was afraid that the letter sounds mouse pad wouldn’t look as good as it did on the website, but I was so happy when I took it out of the bag, and it looked just like the preview!

If you’re interested in creating this, simply click the link below to view the picture of the letter sounds mouse pad I made. You can then upload it to Vistaprint.

Letter Sounds Mouse Pad

Looking for other ways to practice letter recognition with your students? Check out the resources below.