Now really all you have to do is print and while that sounds simple (it is, I promise!), there may be some other questions you have about the printing process. What printer is good? What paper should you use? What print settings? I can’t speak to what printer is the best for printing out hybrid stuff as I don’t think there is any one right answer, but I can say that I love my Canon Pixma. I have an older model (an MX870) that is a true workhorse. I’ve used it several times a week for the last year plus more casually for two years before that and it’s still going strong. One of the tips I have for making hybrid affordable is off-brand ink. It’s not for everyone (some are worried about ruining their printer but I’ve always used off-brand and have never had a problem) but I’m more than happy to save 80% on the cost of ink. It lasts just as long as the Canon ink, if not longer, and prints just as well. My printer takes five separate cartridges and I would say I can go for three months even with my heavy printing before needing to replace. I got two full rounds of ink for my printer (10 cartridges total) for $15 on Amazon.
As far as paper goes, I recommend matte photo paper or presentation paper. I’ve heard of a lot of people using 8.5″ x 11″ Epson Matte Premium Presentation Paper and having great results. I use Canon Matte photo paper and while I most often print using their 4×6 sheets, I do have their 8.5″ x 11″ and use it as well. And again, for all of you from the States, Amazon has a great deal on the Canon Matte paper and I can often find a package of 120 4×6 or 50 8.5×11 for under $5. You can use non-textured cardstock as well but I have found the color to much less vibrant and the cards just seem more flat overall, but if that is what you have access to, it isn’t a terrible option at all.
Print settings are obviously going to vary depending on your printer. After opening your PDF, the first thing you will want to do is open the print setup menu. On my Mac, it looks like this.
As you can see, mine is defaulting to 4×6 so you will want to change that to 8.5×11 (US Letter borderless). Next, let’s go to Quality and Media (again the wording might be different on your printer but it should be somewhat similar). I have my media set to Matte Photo Paper and would recommend that setting even if you’re using the presentation paper. I also have my print quality set to high. High is going to use more ink. I’ve heard of people using just the normal setting with fine results but I like to use the highest quality.
Under my color options, you will see I have the brightness set to normal and the intensity bumped up toward Dark just a little. This is a personal preference and I recommend you play around and print out on scrap paper to find out what you like.
Let’s discuss printing scale. On the first screen that opens when you go to print, you will see it says print scale and mine defaults to 100%. Usually when I print directly from my PDF reader, that works just fine. But I have heard of some people having issues with their printer zooming in a little and the cards being an off size. If you find this happens (again, maybe send a regular piece of copy paper as a test run before using your good paper), I have a few solutions for you. First, make sure you never select Scale to Fit. You want it to be printing at actual size the designers have set up when creating the PDF. Second, mess with that scale percentage a little. You probably won’t need to adjust it too much so try it at 97% or 98%. When I print from Photoshop Elements on my 4x6s, I have found that I have to adjust the print size to 3.95″ x 5.8″ and it’ll print perfectly. I was recommended this article about finding true print size according to your screen resolution and find it to be really interesting, though more in depth than I’ve gone previously. Just playing around with it like I’ve mentioned above will probably be more than enough for the average user.
Okay, so what if you don’t want to print all the cards as they’re laid out on the PDF? What if you only need a few and you want to pick and choose but you don’t have Photoshop or Photoshop Elements? If you have Pages on your Mac or Word on your PC, you can easily drag photos into your document and arrange them and even type on your cards before printing out. I have a Mac so I’ll explain how to do it in Pages, but I found this article for you PC users and the process is similar. When I dragged a 3×4 card into Pages, it resized it for me. I’m not sure why, but I simply clicked on the little square on one of the corners and resized until it said 3×4. Just make sure you’re paying attention to proportions before printing out.
Next, if you want to add text, just click on the little icon on the top that says text box. You can drag the text box to where you need it to be and then resize. Type up your journaling and add a few more cards before sending to print, keeping in mind the printing tips we discussed above.
So now you have printed up (and maybe even typed on) some digital journal cards. Put them onto a page or a spread and you are officially a hybrid pocket pager! 
Let’s move onto the second way you can approach hybrid. So you’ve got your cards but what if you want to use some of the coordinating word art, tags, and other elements? Using the same process in Pages, I dragged and resized some of the word art and other embellishments from the Quinn Storyteller and added to my document before printing.
Doing it this way works perfectly, but you also have to fussy cut the elements and that’s SO not my thing. I’m definitely not patient enough. Thankfully, I have a Silhouette Cameo that will do the cutting for me with their Print and Cut feature. Leena Loh has a great tutorial on printing and cutting so head on over there if you have a Silhouette and would like to learn more about this fantastic feature. I like to not only print what I plan on immediately using, but print up some of my favorite word art pieces and tags to keep them on hand for future use. I can always use a tag or word art in my spreads.
The third way to approach hybrid is probably the most complex and is the way I like to do it now. It does require a program like Photoshop or Photoshop Elements. I did a process post for Jaimee last month and I invite you to check it out to find out more about creating hybrid pages and printing as single-layered cards in Photoshop Elements.
For those that have not seen my previous post, this method is basically creating an empty 24×12 canvas in Photoshop and pulling in cards, photos, and embellishments and adding digital shadowing so that it appears as if all my elements have the same shadow they would if I were really layering them as paper elements. While there is a cost involved in using this method (Photoshop Elements is $60-$100 and Photoshop CS is $9.99/month bundled along with Lightroom), it definitely affords you the most flexibility in playing around with your digital products.
One of the most important things about creating pages in this way is realistic shadows. There are some genius digital artists who have the most realistic-looking shadows, but I have not mastered this art yet. If you would like to try to learn more about shadowing on your own, check out these tutorials by Sahlin Studio or One Little Bird. But you can also go the easy route like me and use shadow styles. I have a couple different freebie shadow styles that I use but I find I most often turn to the free ones by Mommyish. If you do not already know how to install shadow styles, check out this for Elements or this for Photoshop CS.
Now to apply a style is SUPER SIMPLE. For instance, in this screenshot, you can see I have a card from Quinn and coordinating word art placed on top of the card. This is what it looks like without any shadowing.
Now to add a shadow style, I highlight the layer I want to have the shadow. In this instance, it’s my moon word art. Just click on it to have it selected. Next, I navigate to my styles menu. In Photoshop Elements 12, I do this by clicking on Effects in the bottom right. You will see there are three headings at the top of this menu that say “Filters,” “Styles,” and “Effects.” Click on styles. You will probably need to select from the pulldown menu your Shadow Styles.
In the Mommyish shadow styles, she has three different shadows that would work fine for this element- Cardstock, Paper, and Sticker. Sticker has the lightest shadowing effect, Paper is in the middle, and Cardstock has the deepest. Personally, I like the way paper shadow looks. With your element selected, double-click on your chosen shadow style and it is instantly applied. If you decide that you do not like the shadow you chose or simply want to see what another one looks like, just hit cmd+Z on Mac or ctrl+z on PC to undo and click on another shadowing style to try it out.
This is the same card with shadowing added. As you can see, it stands out a little more from the background and looks more like you added a paper die cut to a card.
In my post last month, I discussed how I print out in PSE and how I take pictures of my spreads so feel free to refer back to that post to see how I do it. The number one thing I recommend is to take the cards outside of the pockets and lay on top of your page protectors. That way you still get the look of the page protectors without the glare. Then, invest in a good whiteboard (like the kind you used for school projects) to lay your projects on top of. If you would like to see how others are photographing their projects, check out one of these tutorials: Photographing Indoors and Using Natural Light and a Whiteboard (which is almost exactly how I do it).
Here is the spread I created with Quinn. All of my cards and photos are printed out as one layer on 4×6 sheets of the Canon Matte Photo paper. Then I cut up into their appropriate sizes, embellish, and slip into the pockets.
I had a lot to document for this week so I also created a double-sided 6×12 insert.
I hope I have covered the basics (plus a little!) and have inspired you to give hybrid a try. If you have any further questions, please feel free to ask them in the comments here and I’ll do my best to answer them for you.