My guest post for today over at Modern Parents Messy Kids pushed me to finally put something together, so go check out that post, and come on back here for a read!
Last year, I used some fun graphics and sayings, and designed and printed my own Christmas cards on DIY wedding invitations. That's right, wedding invitations. They're blank, so who says you can't use them for other things, right?
This year I decided to do our first ever holiday photo card, mostly because we actually had a professional photo to work with.
There are so many amazing options now for photo cards, but two of my favourite sites are Tiny Prints and minted. The pricing and quality can't be beat for professional, custom cards, and if you have the time and the want for them, they are definitely worth consideration.
I decided to do something on my own this year, however, and was more than pleased with the results. I took our professional photo, added a little "faux snow" and a holiday greeting on my graphics program, converted to .jpg, and uploaded it online to be printed and picked up at Wally World just a couple hours later. I can't believe how fast it was (I honestly haven't had my digital photos turned to prints in years), and how well my graphics turned out super-imposed on the photo. I even made one print with two smaller photos, so my one 20 cent photo gave me two prints (10 cents each, woo hoo!). Now, I still like to write a personal message, so I include these prints in the sleeve of an actual card and not alone, but everybody does it differently!
I've been pounding away at writing the Christmas cards ever since, and with each photo I tape into the card, I'm more and more happy with how it turned out, and how inexpensive it was. And then this week it dawned on me... I could very easily translate this into a design service, where in less than 24 hours, you could have a custom designed photo card in your email ready to upload to be printed at Costco, or Wal Mart, or wherever you get your photos printed.
Best of all, if you run out of cards, you can just order more.
I know it's really short notice, but go on over to my etsy shop to pick out your digital design. They are JUST $5! Yup, FIVE dollars! And you can print AS many as you want! I know there are even better deals out there for printing, but using what I know, if you spend $5 for my design, and order 100 prints at Walmart Photo Centre, those 100 photo cards will have cost you just $25. And if you print 2 to a print, you could end up with 200 wallet sized prints. Holy heck that's a lot!
I haven't even got to the good part yet though- my favourite part about printing your own photo cards is that you can mix and match. You could have 4 different photos (say a family photo, a baby photo, a dog photo, etc) and have 4 different photo card designs to send to people. There are no minimums on how many you can print, so if you only want 10 photo cards of your dog, then go for it! Options, people! How amazing is that? And from now, until December 5th, you can get 4 designs of your choosing, with 4 separate photos, for just $12. I like to spread the Christmas cheer!
To make your prints look even more custom, try using a corner punch (buy at Walmart or Michaels) to round off the edges, or frame your print with some card stock.
So what do you think? Do you like this idea for last minute Christmas photo cards?
(Who would believe me if I told you my two model families are actually BOTH Smith families. No seriously, they are. No joke.)