Good morning! Today marks the start of something new that I’m trying this year. I’m going to call it the Holiday Card Hustle. Every year since my husband and I were married 8.5 years ago, I have made our Christmas cards, and since our kiddos were born, we have taken beautiful family photos each fall in anticipation of using them as our Christmas card… but I can’t ever seem to let go of the idea that I should be making our Christmas cards. I have all of these supplies, so I feel almost guilty if I don’t use them to make our Christmas cards. The last couple of years have seen a Christmas card with one of our family photos tucked inside, but this year, I decided to switch it up a little and incorporate our family photo into the handmade holiday cards! Over the next several days, I will be posting inspiration melding the two concepts. I hope you’ll enjoy it and be inspired to create your own hybrid handmade photo cards!
For today’s card, I’m using one of our photos from our photo shoot last year (our kiddos were so tiny and young!! waaahhhh!) I wanted to use several different layouts and poses in this series to show you have easy this can be. My first tip is to create 5×7 cards. Photos come standard in 4×6 size, but I found that if you’re trying to fit that 4×6 photo onto an A2 card, you a) have to cut some of your lovely photo off and b) have very little room to add your handmade embellishments. The postage cost for A2 and A7 envelopes is the same, so it doesn’t cost any extra to upgrade your card size!! As long as you are less than 1/4″ thick, your card should mail nicely without any extra postage. Here is a handy reference guide from the US Postal Service.
To start, I die cut a frame from Papertrey Ink’s Mix and Mat Berry Boughs die from some Kraft card stock. I also die cut a solid version of the frame using my photo, then adhered the frame to the photo. I like to keep my color scheme coordinated with my photo, so I chose to focus on the neutrals and greens found in the picture. (It helps when your photo outfits are carefully… perhaps obsessively…. coordinated haha!)
After I had framed my photo, I cut a 5×7 panel of Hero Arts’s Woodgrain card stock (HA|EH). The texture of this card stock is just lovely… I want to buy a ream of it haha! You could also use woodgrain patterned paper for a similar, more cost-effective look. I wanted a subtle, somewhat textured background that would coordinate nicely with the woodland scene in the photograph.
Next, I decided to add some more foliage by adding sprigs of Papertrey Ink’s Beautiful Berries Winter stamp set. In keeping with the neutrals and green theme, I stamped the foliage in Willow and Green Apple inks from Simon Says Stamp, and just the second step of the berries using Fog ink. Using just the second step of the two-step berry stamp creates white berries!
I had a custom stamp created for my holiday cards this year from Bossy Joscie, which I stamped on the back of this flat postcard, so I wanted to keep the greeting on the front simple. I decided to use a simple die cut “joy” from My Favorite Things (EH|SSS) cut from some champagne shimmer card stock and mounted in the corner of my kraft frame. The final touch was a twine bow amongst the berries and branches!
I hope you enjoyed this first photo holiday card hybrid! I have lots more ideas to share with you, and I hope my excitement is contagious! Have a great day, and I’ll see you back here tomorrow with some more inspiration!
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