Creating Holiday Cards Using PicMonkey

Have you mailed out Christmas cards yet?  It's not too late!  Mine are hitting the post office today.  As usual, I put the task of creating our Christmas cards off until the last minute. 

Why do I put it off?  Designing and ordering Christmas cards using printing sites is time consuming!  Not to mention expensive!  I've seen gorgeous cards that cost upwards of $1 per card, and at Christmas time, that is just not an expense that I want to add to the list!

Luckily for me, I have discovered the wonder that is PicMonkey this year, and was able to create fun photo-cards in less than an hour!  And with stores now offering web-to-print services, I was able to have those babies in my hand about an hour after that!  It was so easy and fast....I love living in the digital age.

Have you tried PicMonkey yet?!  It's is an amazing, web-based picture editor that novices like me can easily figure out how to use.  Best of all...it's free!  I edit and watermark all of my House in the Heights pics this way. 

Well, unless I'm REALLY tired and rushed to post.  Then I skip editing and give them to you as is.  I'm crazy like that.

Using PicMonkey to create holiday cards is amazingly easy.  Start by clicking on Create a Collage, and selecting a layout for your pictures.  PicMonkey even has layouts entitled 'Cards' to help you find one that will work for you, and you can play around with the layout until it meets your needs.

Next, select the Images tab to drag your photos into the collage.  You can use photos provided or open your own photos from your computer.

Clicking on the Swatches tab allows you to bring pattern and color into your collage.....

...and the Background tab allows you to fill in the space between your pictures with color.

Once you are happy with your photo collage, you will want to switch over to the Photo Editor by clicking on Edit at the top of the page.  Be sure that you are happy with your collage before you do that, because you cannot go back and change or rearrange your pictures or colors once you switch to Edit.  The Photo Editor allows you to add words and embellishments to finish your holiday card. 

Once I was happy with my card, I saved the picture as a JPEG image on my computer.  Since I was in a hurry to get the cards in hand, I chose to upload and print my picture using Walmart's Photo Printing Service.  I was able to upload my picture from home and pick them up an hour later.  This year, I ordered 45 cards, and paid only $.19 each!  I had to purchase my envelopes separately, but at $4.27 for 50 envelopes, I was still very pleased with the price.

The photos were super-cute on their own, but I decided that I wanted to make them a little sturdier, so I opted to mount each photo on cardstock in various shades of green.  I simply cut the cardstock to be 1/4 of an inch smaller than the envelopes, sprayed the back of each photo with some spray adhesive, and stuck them on top of the cardstock.

I thought they turned out to be really fun!  Is it weird that I do photo-cards of my cats?  Whatever.  I think it's hilarious and don't really care.  Some day I'll do kids AND cats.  Or maybe just kids.  Wait and see ;)

I made the front of my envelopes special using a gold paint pen to write the addresses, but I doubt that anyone on my Christmas card list wants their address splashed all over the internet.  So I'll spare you that picture.

But I DID use some fun Christmas washi tape to seal the envelopes on the back.  I thought it would be a fun surprise when people turn the envelopes over. 

And that's it! A great way to create inexpensive holiday cards in an afternoon.  In addition to the cards, I had to buy the envelopes ($4.27), cardstock ($5) and washi tape ($1) , but all said and done, the total cost of cards was just under $20 (plus postage). 

Have you tried PicMonkey yet?  Go now!  You'll love it!

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