[twitter]We gathered up the boys in their favorite sweaters and piled down to the park a few weekends back to do our family photo sessions for our Christmas cards.
The past few years we have used the very excellent Carolyn Egerszegi in Vancouver (top), and Shannon Hilton in Calgary (below) to take our portraits.
This year, with a family budget crunch we decided to DIY the photo.
I ditched the iPhone and grabbed my old Panasonic Lumix and we headed to play in the leaves of Stanley Park – Calgary. It’s weird using “an old camera” instead of a smartphone for photos. I admit I only tried to touch the screen twice.
They’re “okay,” (no they’re not). Those two women are professionals for a reason (we’ll save our pennies for a pro next year).
When it comes to holiday cards, it’s easy to get Christmas Card templates online, do a little editing of titles and photos and have beautiful custom Christmas cards ready in a jiffy.
Minted is a site where graphic designers come together to post their ideas for you to print. The site crowd-sources design and art from a global community of independent designers, then sells their best designs as fine products such as stationery, wall art, décor for the home, wedding invitations, Save the Date, Birth Announcements, Journals, and .. Christmas card templates!
Consumers and designers curate Minted‘s product assortment by voting on the entries to each challenge, ensuring that the best designers and designs are surfaced and represented. Minted then produces and sells the winning designs, paying the designer a commission on every sale.
There are dozens of pages of designs. Each one with different photo layouts, fonts, and color palettes. Simply upload your photos, choose your colors, customize the cards and .. ho ho ho!
Here are a few designs I tried out:
I’m not going to tell you which ones I picked, you’ll just have to hope to get one in the mail!