Tis the season....for making holiday cards. I have been making our holiday cards for the past two years. They were...ahem...sort of put together last minute and by someone who had no idea what she was doing. That would be me, of course! Never having been a paper scrapbooker or a paper crafter at all, I had less than no idea what I was doing. So...both years it was a photo taped to a card although by the second year I had progressed from rolling little bits of tape to using double sided tape....{told you I wasn't a scrapper, right?} Want to see them?
I still like this photo a lot. I was tromping around filling bird feeders and looked up and saw this. Dropped the bird seed and rushed to get my camera. I added the Happy Hanukkah and the frame. I uploaded it to Walmart, made a bunch of prints and taped them to plain white cards. Oh and I stuck a photo of the girls inside the card. Fortunately my friends are too kind to comment.....
This is a real rainbow taken over Cobbett's Pond which is in my town. And it really was taken in early December. I cloned brushed out the wires going right across the photo {I love clone brushes} and added the date and place. I made it into a new years card since I was running way behind last year so I made them in that week off ....actually not a bad idea....
Just so you know I can do better than this, here is a card I made for Jen Strange's digiscrapping blog Let me tell you it is the closest I am ever going to get to being published!! She got my name wrong but that's ok....
Same photo, I know....but with a bit more pizzaz. Or at least I think so. The kit is Chanuakah by Kim Hill of CG Essentials . I will post this LO in the photo album with details on how I did it later.
Back to card making.....first off you need to make a couple of decisions....Are you printing this at home or sending it out? What size do you want? What about envelopes? Are you making a card type card - you know the kind you fold and put in an envelope like a real card? Or are you doing a photo card type with a photo and greeting that you just slip in an envelope?
Printing at home gives you the most flexibility in terms of time and you can print out just the exact number you need. But make sure you have enough cartridges and paper - nothing like running out of those when you just want to get the whole thing done!! Big bummer! And you may find that this turns out to be sort of expensive especially of you are doing a ton of cards.
If you send it out to print, you will need to factor in shipping time. Which is why that New Year's kind of card makes a lot of sense to me..... And you need to add extra time because it is just a wee bit busy at the post office right now. From FxFoto you can upload to any print site you desire but it would be a good idea to check with the site to see what sizes they print and how much they charge. It would be terrible to spend an hour or two composing a card, only to find they don't print that size.
Here's a little post I wrote about making your own folded cards. I had some made a a couple of popular print sites so I wrote a bit about the pros and cons of those sites. You can read it - Printing Holiday Cards
Speaking of size: the most common sizes are 4x6 in ; 5x7 and 4x8 but not everyone prints 4x8 so check first before you design. You can fit a couple of nice photos in each of these sizes and still have room left over for embellishments and a greeting! And you aren't stuck with the templates that everyone else uses. It really isn't hard to create you own.
A couple of more things: Envelopes. Yup, you going to need those too. You can find sizes for the card sizes above at most office supply places like Staples or Office Max. I have seen them at ACMoores and Michael's too. The post office has rules about this stuff - like they make you pay more for non-standard sizes. Ok...they call this the "Simplified Domestic Rates" except I don't think it is so simple....but here are the rules and regs for making sure you have the right postage! US Post Office
Stamps - this is a cool idea...you can make your own stamps!! Sweet! Personalize Your Postage
Special Postmarks? I know the town of Bethlehem NH is a very popular postmark place for cards. You can check out all the details at Special Postmarks.
Onto to making the cards......I am going to assume you have already edited the photos you want to include. If you need help with editing, here is a list of FxFoto tutorials on this blog which will help.
If you have FxFoto Creative Edition you already have a Christmas kit called Be Naughty Christmas by Melyssa Connolly. There are tons of designers with holiday kits...just cruise around to any digital designer or website and find a kit. Here a tutorial to help you with that too : Downloading Digital Kits
Now you may not think of a card as a scrapbook page or collage but it is. If you haven't ever done a layout, you may find this tutorial Making a LO helpful. It takes you step by step through making a layout. So below I am going to go through the steps that are somewhat different from a scrapbook page, namely the page size.
Now....click on the Collage button in the upper left corner. Select New Collage and then select Multi Photo collage (scrapbook page) and then click Next. Now to choose your size: in the left hand box, Collage Page Guide Limits, click on Custom Page Size. In the boxes just to the right, fill in your width and height and they can be in pixels, inches or centimeters. If you look just below the Collage Page Guide Limits box, you can choose pixels/inches/centimeters. Do be careful to get the right orientation as well as the right measurements. What I mean is that if you want your 4x6 card to be held vertically then you need put 4 inches as the width and 6 inches as the height. But if you want the card to be held landscape style, then the width is 6 inches and the height is 4. Does that make sense?
You've got the size now. Let's get a background.... look on the right side and find Fill Pattern. Click on the box marked Image and then on the button marked Background Image. Navigate to your scrapbook kits. The FxFoto ones are in My Pictures in a folder called FxFoto_clips. Find the Bey Naughty Christmas kit or any other one and open it. Now select the background and click Open. Now click Finish. You will see the background in the main pane and you are all set to add embellishments and photos.
To add photos just click on them. The whole kit of Be Naughty Christmas plus all the other kits that come with FxFoto Creative are already in folders in the left pane so you can just click on the embellishments and papers you want and they will appear in the main working area. If you are so new that you don't have any photos in FxFoto, never fear, here's a tutorial for that : Getting Your Photos into FxFoto
Text? Gotta have that! Here's a link to the Text/Journaling tutorial.
Done? Save it. I would save it as both a Collage and a jpg. Why? You can do back and re-edit the collage if you would like or if you are like me and make a lot of typos. The jpg is better fro uploading to a print or share site but it cannot be edited - everything is essentially glued down. So I save as both....
To Save as a Collage: You must do this first if you want to save both. Click on the Collage button in the upper left pane. Click on Save Collage Document. In the dialog box, decide whether you are adding it as a new collage or replacing an old one, then pick the folder and name your collage and click Next. Click on Multi Photo Collage (Scrapbook Page) and click Next. See if you want to change anything (I usually just keep the default settings) and click on Next. Again, see if you want to change anything and click on Finish. Now your photo with caption is saved as a collage and can be changed later.
To Save as a Image (jpeg): Click on File, then Save Image As. Decide on what you are saving - the original or composed or title/caption and click on Next. (By the way, you will notice the button with the camera in the bottom left corner that says Save Collage Document. Clicking on this will bring you to the dialog boxes above and let you save it as a collage.) Decide whether you are replacing the original image or adding it as a new image. if you choose Add as New Image then both the original and the titled/corrected photo will be in your FxFoto folder. Click on Finish.
When you are done, you can print them at home. Click on the Print button and follow the steps.
Or you can upload them to your favorite print site by clicking on the Upload button. If you would like, you can use our partner print sites, Mpix or ABCPhoto . If you want to use another site like Walmat or whatever, then choose the Generic Upload. This will put your photos in a special folder labeled FxFotoUpload which is in My Documents. Then you go to your favorite print site, sign in to upload and when they ask you to browse to find your photos, you go to My Documents > FxFotoUpload andthen open the folder to find you photos. Easy, eh?
IDEAS! Here's a link with some other cards and other links so you can get your creative joices flowing! Card Ideas. (really original title....) And if you need something fast here is an idea: Using a Template
Happy Card Making!
I would love to see what you create! I would love to put them in the gallery!! You need to tell me which kits you used since I want to give credit where credit is due! You can send them to me at seswhite@gmail.com and if you need some help, please email me! Really, I don't mind!
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