Fun with Candy Bar Wrappers

One fun and easy project I’ve done using Publisher is to make a candy bar wrapper replica for special occasions. These are simple to create publications that you wrap around a store bought candy bar to dress them up with your information on them.

You could use them for:

• Birth announcements with the new baby’s name and vital statistics on it
• Party invitations with directions, date and time information
• Wedding announcements with the happy couple’s names
• Promotional business handout with your business hours, address and phone number
And many more occasions that you might want a different way to let people know some information.

Here at Microsoft I make a different one each year on my hire date anniversary to hand out to the people in my work group. It’s a tradition here to hand out candy or other goodies on your hire date.

So first off start by picking a candy bar you want to put your wrapper on. Open up the wrapper and measure it so you can get the correct dimensions. Depending on the shape of your candy bar you will have to position your data on the wrapper so that when it is wrapped around the original bar it looks good. Once you figure out the different sections of your wrapper you can print one out to verify it fits well and make adjustments as needed. Here’s a picture of the layout I used on one of my creations.

Don’t forget to leave an area where the glue will go on the overlapping section.

 

Once you’ve got the different sections laid out you can go ahead and fill them up with the information you want displayed on your wrapper.

I’ve found that the color on the screen may be slightly different from what the printer I’m using prints out so you can try printing out a test sheet with different shades of the colors you are using to see which ones print out the way you want it to look.

Enter all your information, pictures and anything else you want to include on your wrapper and print one out as a test. Cut your printout to size and wrap it around your candy bar and glue the overlapping section.  If everything looks good and fits well then you are ready to print some more out. If not go back and make any adjustments and changes you need to. Depending on the size of your candy bar you might be able to printout more than one on a page.  If you select all the objects you’ve used and make them a grouped object you can then copy and paste that object onto the page so you can get more wrappers on the page.  Position the grouped objects so they don’t overlap. Print them, cut them, wrap them and glue them and that’s it. You have a great looking invitation, announcement or just a custom candy bar to hand out to your friends and family.

Here’s a picture of the one I did for my 7 year Microsoft anniversary mimicking the famous Hershey’s bar.

 

Once you’re done you can save your publication as a template to reuse it again later. You could also share it with the online community at Office Online.

John Dimmick

Software Design Engineer in Test II

 

About the contributor:  John Dimmick is a Software Design Engineer in Test and has worked for Microsoft for 12.5 years, 10.5 years on the Publisher test team. In his spare time he likes using Mail Merge and making perfect circles.