Much to Big Guy’s chagrin, I insist on sending out Christmas cards every year. About 75 of them to be exact. And every year, he grumbles a bit about the cost and the effort of the whole process. But I have a large extended family and, although we aren’t able to visit with all of them regularly, I do like to keep in touch. I think Christmas cards are, in the general scheme of things, an inexpensive and easy way to send a little something special to the people you love around the holidays.
I enjoy all of the cards we receive, but I especially like the photo cards. It’s fun to see the highlights of the year, and how much kids have grown. We’ve been sending photo cards each year since Bug was born (sometimes with a holiday newsletter inside) and I also keep a copy of each as our own special keepsake of the year. This year, when Tiny Prints asked if we’d like to review their Christmas Cards, I was pretty excited. In addition to the standard 4 X 9″ photo card most of us are used to, they have cards with tri-folds, pop-up cards, cards with pictures that flip and even round cards you can hang on your tree. In fact, they have more than 1000 Christmas card designs and many of those have various options such as color, font, and even the style of card (flat, fold, tri-fold, etc.). You can easily search based on cost, color, style, number of photos, size, font, designer, paper type and more. I spent far too much time just browsing all of my options and playing around with customizations. It helps to go in with a vision!
In the end, I opted with a fairly simple tri-fold design because I loved how our pictures looked in the settings:
This is just a screen shot of the cards, so the resolution is mediocre. The back has another family picture and all of our holiday greeting messages in red. I went with a semi-gloss finish (as opposed to the matte) because I think it will make the pictures pop. We’ll see! It’s super easy to add photos and swap them around, so once I decided on a design, things zipped along. Lucky for me, Tiny Prints has expedited service, so I still can get my cards here and sent back out again in time for Christmas!
Tiny Prints also offers you a webpage where you can write your family newsletter and include additional photos. They’ll print the url right on your card. It’s a nice way to include all of your favorite pictures and avoid printing a ream of newsletter pages. I didn’t do it this year simply because I didn’t have the time, but I think it’s a lovely option for extending your holiday cards. Another way to save time is to have Tiny Prints address, stamp and mail the cards for you. It costs $0.35 plus the cost of stamps. I considered that, too, but our mailing information is currently in label format and I just don’t have the time and energy to convert it to an Excel spreadsheet. If you have your addresses already organized, this would be a great time-saver. There are some other useful options, including a digital proof (so you can make sure it looks perfect before printing), accessories such as coordinated return address labels and gift tags, and complimentary photo touch-up service (brighten, sharpen, remove red-eye).
I’ll keep you posted when my cards arrive. In the meantime, you can start planning your Valentine’s Day cards now (but keep your eye out, because they’ll be adding lots of new designs).
Disclosure: I received complimentary holiday cards from Tiny Prints for review purposes. There was no promise of a positive review and the opinions contained in this post are my own.
