It's that time of year...time to plan your holiday cards...
I don't know about you, but I love getting holiday cards in the mail! But, almost as much as I love getting them in the mail I love deciding on our holiday cards. Years ago, Brad and I would spend an evening after work on the top level of Macy's in New York picking out the perfect cards to send out to our friends and family. It was often long and exhausting with lots of back and forth, but we always found something perfectly suited to us.
Now that we have children, we, of course, enjoy adding in a picture of the kiddos. But, we don't always enjoy having their pictures on the front of the card. To us, it just doesn't feel quite like a holiday card that way. For Violet's first, second and third (Henry's first) Christmases we were able to find an online card company (I'm pretty sure it was Shutterfly) that happened to have a folded card with no photo on the front (only inside which was a nice surprise when you opened it) and it happened to suit us perfectly! Hooray!
But alas, photo cards have become so popular. And, last year, after searching and searching and searching for an online holiday card with no photo on the front, but still with an option for a photo inside, I came up empty handed. I guess we are the only ones who are looking for the more traditional holiday card look.
I was just about to give in last year. I picked out a few ideas that I thought weren't bad, but they didn't pass the Brad test. Ha ha, it wasn't all him, I wasn't "comfortable" with the options either. So, what to do, what to do? Hmm...
Make my own! We found a card that we liked (this time from Tiny Prints) that had a one photo option for the front and I made a collage. I made a few Christmas trees from ric rac and fabric scraps, scanned them into my computer and then used that as our "photo". Ta da, a photo-less holiday card!
Well, not completely photo-less, there were the surprise photos on the inside! Which incidentally, I made as a collage first and then imported it as a single photo. That's a good tip, you have much more flexibility that way.
I haven't even started to think about holiday card creating this year, but I'm thinking we will likely go this route again.
