Homemade, Last Minute, Cute, Kinda Green Christmas Cards!

Okay so this morning I started shopping around for Christmas cards online. I've done this many times in the past few months and always got discouraged because the recycled cards are sooo expensive. I was going to give up on that idea and instead created a cute card with some caricatures of my family on the front. I was almost at the point of entering my credit card number to the tune of $50 for 50 cards. That was $30 for the cards, $4 for some matching gift tags I'd fallen for, and the rest was all shipping and handling (just to get them here in 7-10 days - kinda close!). Anyway, one of the last options before checking out was to download the caricatures for unlimited use on your computer. The cost was $1.99 per caricature or $6.99 for the whole group of six. I was a little concerned that the company wouldn't allow you to purchase just the images without an additional order but after deleting the printed cards and gift tags, only the download charge remained!! No tax and no shipping, just $6.99 total billed to my card.

When I got home tonight I used MS Works and Adobe Photoshop to recreate the cards I would have had printed. I typed a nice paragraph inside summarizing our year and wishing everyone the best, and left room at the bottom for a personal greeting and signature. It took me a couple hours to get it right but I'm very picky. Plus, I don't feel the greatest - I think I'm getting sick - so I didn't feel like doing much else anyway.

Anyhow, here's what I ended up with. I printed them on 100% recycled cardstock (up to 30% post consumer) that I had left over from our wedding invitations. As I have to do now is find some envelopes to fit, which I doubt will be recycled. I'll use some of the many return address labels my hubby gets free in the mail from places like Easter Seals instead of printing new ones.

If you'd like to try this idea, I did it at VistaPrint, just click on "Caricatures" on the lower left hand column. Once I paid for them I had to call tech support to figure out how to download them. You go to My Account in the top right corner, click the See More... tab, then My Caricatures, then Download. Mine showed up as a .zip file on my desktop so I selected all the individual files out of there and pasted in to my pictures folder for easy access. That's sounds super confusing so if you try this and need help I can guide you through it a little better!

Let me know what you think!

Back


Front


Inside Top


Inside Bottom


Images were definitely more clear when printed!