Simple Personalized Holiday Greeting Cards

Every time the holidays come around many people look for new and creative ways to make some greetings cards that they can share with family and friends. They often end up buying them at any of the many shops that carry them.

Others simply take family pictures and turn them into greeting cards. Although these methods are time tested, they often lack creativity and the receivers of the cards although they probably appreciate the gesture, just look at greeting cards as just more of the same.

Family pictures turned into greeting cards are nice but if you think about it, this has been done for such a long time that they have become routine. Using this style adds a new twist on the personalized greeting card theme.

One very creative way and one which is relatively inexpensive is to get some Christmas ornaments and place them in a locations that seem out of place.

A good example is to take a single ornament and place it on the sand at your local beach, river, or lake area and take a close up that also includes parts of the location so the audience can identify the location; e.g. beach, river bed, lake shore etc.

Your pictures even if done on film, can be printed for as little as 97 cents per 5 x 7 size or $3.99 per 8 x 10. If you compare the prices to a set of greeting cards plus the postage, then they are not expensive at all plus those who you send them to will be looking at new and creative greeting cards made by you which in turn shows that you went the extra mile to make sure that your cards were well liked.

When you print your images try to do so with high stock paper rather than on photographic paper which is more expensive.

It is better to digitize your images so that you can add text. Any digital editing program has the capacity of text and even most computers have a simple editing program which also lets you add text.

After you add text simply write the address of whom you are sending them to it on the back and place a stamp. There is really no need to place them in an envelope, but doing so protects the finished product more.

Rest assured that postal employees will not stop everything they are doing just to stare at your images. They are far too busy to do so.

The best ornaments are simple yet richly decorated ones like one color glass balls as they are unmistakably recognized as being Christmas related.

Others can work but I have found that simplicity often works best with projects such as this one. Highly ornate and complicated ornaments can end up distracting the viewer and can be confused as being something else.

If you have more than one they can work too just place them side by side and do not leave too much empty space between them. The shape does not really matter but round ones sit better in an unstable environment like sand.

For a better project that is also more fun for the entire family, try making your own Holiday ornaments from some beach items like sand dollars, sea shells, stones and driftwood.

These are rather easy to find by simply scouring the sand near the beach, cleaning them and decorating them with simple materials like glue, glitter and ribbons.

Sand dollars have been a popular item to use in making Holiday ornaments but it is better to buy some that have been treated instead of getting live ones since they are not that easy to find and they can be a hassle to clean and get ready.

If you still want to include your family on the pictures, then do so but make sure that the pictures show the ornament or ornaments clearly. Close ups and careful cropping should be enough if done properly.

A good set up will include the ornament in the center of the frame with you and your family surrounding it. In other words, the ornament takes the center place in the frame.

In this case it is best to use larger that normal ornaments to ensure that its details are clearly visible and better yet if you use more than one.

Pay attention to the reflective qualities of the ornaments and adjust the camera settings accordingly. If they are too bright and reflective they may show as washed out highlights.

Focus on it and manually lock the settings before taking the photograph.