This year I decided to design my own holiday cards. I love being able to send a picture or two to close family and friends each year, and not finding any pre-made templates worth swooning over, made me want to create one all my own. I am not a very photo-editing-software savvy kinda girl. I know nothing about layers or how to add those amazing effects that make a photo look all professional. I can crop, remove red eyes, change a pic to black and white, and enhance the contrast. All very simple and basic. No Photoshop here.
With my lack of skills, I search out and use free editing sites that walk me through the process. One of my favorite sites is Scrapblog.com - I used to create my blog headers here before getting my fabulous makeover (yeah, I am still bragging about April Showers Blog Design). This site gives lots of freebies to play around with: backgrounds, stickers, fonts and more! All the things you need to create your own designs. Here's what to do:
If you aren't already signed up for this free site, you gotta do that first. Once you sign in to your account, you want to click on Create A Scrapblog. Next, you will upload the picture(s) you want to use, then find your backgrounds and stickers. Here is a little hint to keep this free ... be sure when doing your searches that you click on the Least Credits category. This way you see all the freebies first and don't get your heart set on a fancier item that you have to pay for. Double click on the items you would like to use. These items will be moved over to your sidebar library so you can play around with different ideas and styles. Once you have designed your card, you need to Save and Publish it before being able to transfer it to your pictures file. When you have done so, go under the File tab and click on Export as JPEG ... this will allow you to download into your files so you can print your card. Once saved on your computer, you can pick your preferred company to do the printing ... I got 20 cards printed at Costco for a whopping 13 cents a print!! I paid $2.60 for my holiday greetings this year. Woot!! Have fun designing your own cards ... and let me know how they turn out!!
9 comments:
Great tip! I may have to do this next year. We didn’t do photo cards this year. I think your cards look fantastic and I cannot believe how professional they look and how inexpensive they were.
I love sending out holiday cards with pictures! This year we just bought a pre-made one, got pictures printed and shoved one into the front flap of each card (you know the ones)...maybe I'll be more creative next year!
~WM
Great tutorial! And thanks so much for the shout out!!
Hey! Thanks for the shoutout BTW!! LOL!!!
That's a sweeetttt tip! Do you mind if I link back to this post at some point? I'm always on the lookout for great freebies.
wow, very impressive april! it looks great!
Nice! Love the pics too! Y'all are so cute!
You are on a how-to roll & I LOVE IT!
Thanks for the tip! I'm gonna bookmark this post so I can come back to it when I'm ready to use to this. :)
Look at all these fab How To's!!!
And can I just say, you guys are the cutest family EVER???
Love your picture! Thanks for saving my Christmas spirit! I was totally bummed when the cards i wanted were 1.65 a peice so I got mad and just said forget it! No cards this year...I know I am behind on reading your blog, but so glad I didn't wait any longer! I am done, and I have been on that site before, but never knew how to load it to my computer and would get mad and leave it all! THANKS so much for sharing your tips! YOur the best! Merry Christmas!
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