Christmas Cards

It's that time of year...when thoughts start drifting towards the upcoming Christmas season. I've had a bunch of people asking me for photo Christmas card information. So here it is...

Background: Last year about 5 days before Christmas, my mom called me all in a panic. She didn't know what to do about Christmas cards. She didn't have a card-worthy photo of the five of them to get printed into photo cards. She also didn't know how in the world she would find time to write out 100+ cards in time for Dec 25th.

I calmed her down and told her it would be no problem.

Enter Etsy.

Etsy is a website dedicated to selling and buying all things handmade.

I did a quick search and found a lady who designs photo Christmas cards. Next I went through the photos on my computer from the past year and found acceptable photos of the people who needed to be on the card. I worked with the designer lady and we emailed back and forth figuring it all out.

Her design only had one photo on it - I had three photos. No problem.

The photos were colour. Could she turn them into sepia? You bet.

Can she change the wording to reflect what my mom wanted the card to say? Absolutely.

What about the colour combo of the card itself? Whatever colours we wanted could be done.

She emailed me the proof and when it was exactly what my mom wanted, I signed off on it and the actual jpeg file was emailed to me. I then uploaded the jpeg file to Walmart's photo website, and printed off one copy just to make sure it was all good. It was. So I went ahead and printed the required 4x6 copies at the Kitchener Walmart location (keep in mind I was living in Kelowna at the time). My sister LeeAnne picked them up on her way home from work and delivered them to my mom. Within 24 hours from start to finish, my mom had 100 copies of their photo Christmas cards. Easy Peasy as Pie!

This is the card below:

The website is http://www.etsy.com/

Do a search on custom photo cards and you will be amazed at the hundreds of sites that are listed.
There is something available for every taste and style. I've compiled a list below of some sites but this is by no means a complete list of what's all available.

www.etsy.com/shop/announcingyou
www.etsy.com/shop/sillymedesign
www.etsy.com/shop/lukecommasara
www.etsy.com/shop/KMThomasDesigns
www.etsy.com/shop/westwillow
www.etsy.com/shop/winksanddaisies
www.etsy.com/shop/roxterdesigns
www.etsy.com/shop/kottageon5th
www.etsy.com/shop/thirtyonedesigns
www.etsy.com/shop/birdiescustomcards
www.etsy.com/shop/sweetpapers

Quick overview:
* From what I've seen so far this year, costs vary between $10 - $16 for the design that you buy. What you are paying for is the electronic jpeg file that will be emailed to you. From there you can print it at the developer of your choice - for example Walmarts 4x6 prints run at about 19 cents per copy so that's what you'll be paying for in addition to the roughly $15 you pay for the design. Not too shabby!
* The designer we used last year for the card above was winksanddaisies and she was absolutely fantastic to work with. There is a feedback section on the right had side of every shop that you can click on and read to find out previous customers feedback on the product they've purchased.

If you do end up going the etsy route for your Christmas cards this year, I would be interested in getting some feedback from you to find out how you found the process, satisfaction of your finished card and what shop you ended up using, etc. I'll keep this post updated with the information so everyone has access to it!

I'm planning to put together a post in the next couple of days about favourite websites for the Christmas season and online shopping. Stay tuned! :-)