Have you been procrastinating getting your Family Photo Christmas cards printed this year?!?! Well, join the club! Usually we go see Santa at the mall, and I use that photo to make Christmas cards at Costco’s online photo printing service (they are awesome and very inexpensive), but for some reason this year I dropped the ball with getting it done early enough to allow for possible extended shipping times and blah, blah, blah… Here I was with nothing!
Until I had a brilliant idea! I use the website Canva.com for allllllll of my digital photo creations… So why not use it to make my own Christmas cards, and just print them at home on my own photo printer?!?! No waiting for shipping time, I already have all the supplies I need, and I could be putting my Christmas cards in the mail tomorrow… If I was that quick… and motivated. Wink!
SUPPLIES NEEDED TO MAKE DIY FAMILY PHOTO CHRITMAS CARDS:
- Camera – I used my iPhone 11 camera on the Portrait Setting
- Lightroom Photo Editor on your phone (it’s free on your phone, but you have to pay for it on your desktop)
- Canva.com – Where I made the card online, they have 100’s of templates or you can make your own layout
- Photo Printer
- Photo Paper
- Paper Cutter or Scissors
- Envelopes
STEPS TO MAKE DIY FAMILY PHOTO CHRISTMAS CARDS USING CANVA:
Step #1: Take some family photos. You do not need to get professional photos done!! Unless you love spending money on that sort of thing… All you need to do is to make a photo taking date with a friend! Plan to meet your friend at a park, and take turns taking photos of each other. The trick is to take lots and lots of photos from all different angles, and then you are guaranteed to get at least 1 or 2 if not 10 great shots, that you can then edit to look amazing!
NOTE: You could skip this step by using a photo you already have. DONE!
Step #2: Edit your favorite photos! I use the Adobe Lightroom app on my phone because it’s awesome, and it’s free!! SCORE!! If you download Lightroom on your laptop, I believe you will have to pay for it, but its free on your phone so that’s the way to go!
NOTE: If you have multiple photos to edit that have the same lighting, you can use the button that says “previous” and it will add the same edits to the next photo. This will save you lots of time!!!!
Step #3: Upload your photos onto Canva.ca. This is also a free digital creator program with paid upgrades. I have used this site for years, without upgrading, however if you want your own flying cats on your Christmas card, I did remove the background of the flying cats, with a background editor which is a part of the paid upgrades. I trust that not many of you will be looking for flying cats, so you are good to go with the free version of Canva. Wink!
When you are in Canva.com look up “Christmas card” and there are tons of templates that you can use to drop your own family photo into. Each template is totally customizable (you can change every aspect of each template). So have fun with it! Add some flying cats if you are feeling that vibe. Lol. Then after you are done creating your card, save it to your computer.
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Step #4: Print out your cards on your photo printer. For the life of me I couldn’t figure out how to get 2 cards on one sheet of photo paper, so that I could maximize paper space, and so I would have less waste, but I just could not figure it out. Someone I need your HELP with my printer options!!!! Anyways I gave up after screaming at my printer for about an hour, and just printed one per page…
Step #5: Cut out your cards. I had this little handy dandy paper cutter which made this step pretty quick, but some fun scissors would work too!
Now I’m just waiting for the kids school photos to come, so that I can add those to our Christmas card envelopes too! If only I had of ordered the digital files for those… then I could have had those printed out by now too! Next year! wink!
Until next time, enjoy sending love to your loved ones this holiday, and don’t forget to make beautiful things everyday!
XO JCL
