I admit to a bias, when it comes to this photo Christmas card. My husband and I formed a remarried family about 1000 years ago. (OK, not really, some days it just feels like it.) Anyway,  I love the uniqueness and creativity that went into this family’s 2008 holiday greeting card. 

This long-distance couple probably have more frequent flier miles than I can imagine. They are separated by more than 1000 miles and spend every other weekend in the other’s home town. This year unlike most, they have had only brief moments when all the children were together in one place. That wasn’t conducive to a single family photo for their Holiday greeting. 

I must admit to some trying times scanning this card into my system, and I worry that the crispness that came across in the card is missing online. But I love this card and wanted to share it in spite of my scanning challenges.

First I find the use of the non-traditional colors of the border a pleasant change of pace. It also makes the photo of the couple, as well as the parents and children, really pop. They are not lost in the traditional sprigs of pine and holly berries.

The designer of this card, the mom, prefers to handmake her cards but used an online template and service. That may speak to her skill in composition, because I find those who handmake their cards are really sending out mini works of art. I think with those years of experience in custom designing cards, this designer brought all her skills to this custom photo Christmas Card.

Then I loved her message. She sent out such good feelings for those who received this family’s greeting card. Here’s her message:

For those who we see throughout the year,
 we love you and cherish our memories with you.
For  those who we don’t get a chance to see often enough,
we miss you and hope to see you soon!
May the joys of this Christmas season
be with you throughtout the coming year.
 We hope you have a happy and healthy 2009!

Then across from the message, she listed the names and ages of the children and added her personal message to the card.

This card was striking, informative through pictures, and again gave such a personal touch. What fun it was to receive! Thank you for letting me share this on my blog and travel safe and enjoy the holidays!

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If your Christmas greeting cards are still in the box they came in, you may be experiencing Pain #5 in the song, The 12 Pains of Christmas. It’s all over the Internet, and pokes fun at all the stresses that we’ve invented to celebrate the Holiday. It is rather clever, and my friend Diane, who owns Evochi.com, sent it to me. She uses my greeting card system, and we love her wonderful spa soaps and products.

Well, if you’re suffering from Pain #5, you have a couple of choices, if you haven’t gotten around to sending out your Christmas Greeting Cards yet:

1. Admit to procrastinating or having a Holiday meltdown and tell your friend and family that you would rather be late and let them know how important they are to you…even if your wishes arrive a couple days late.
2. Give up and just don’t send them at all.
3. Accept you have poor time management skills. How did it get to be 5 days before Christmas anyway? Send them all out after New Years, and tell them your 2009 resolution was have your greeting cards out before anyone else. Here’s your 2009 Christmas card…in advance.
4. Change your tactics and instead send out New Years Cards, which is really a great way to get people’s attention after the rush of the Holidays and reality of the long winter sets in. If you own your own business or are in sales, this is a great idea anyway.
5. Use the system I use everyday to send cards, and yes, I send greeting cards everyday. To check out the system, start by requesting your gift account at www.RememberChristmasCards.com and fill out the form. If you’re in a hurry and want immediate help you can always reach me at (219) 947-5478 or 888-256-5478. If you go to voice mail, just leave a detailed message, include your best phone number, and I should receive a page that you left a message. (Remember here in NWIndiana, we are just digging out from a serious ice storm, and technology is often weather challenged, but I’ll do my best.)

The system I use makes sending a greeting card extremely easy, quick, and cards start as low as $.98, with custom greeting cards, starting at $1.49, plus postage. What if all you had to do was type in your message, add your contact and click SEND. The next thing you’d see was this message–Your card has been successfully sent!

Worried about large lists? They can be uploaded! Ask me how?

Questions about using a system new to you? You think it will be so hard that it will take way too long? I’ll help. The answer is just a phone call away or check out the step-by-step walk through by our CEO. That’s a part of your FREE gift account.

Confession time: Before I found this wonderful system that I’ve been using since 2005, I ALWAYS did my Holiday cards on Christmas afternoon, after dinner. Since then, I did send out a Happy New Years card just for a different change of pace. This year my Cocker Spaniel, Mulligan, was in charge of sending the holiday greeting cards. See, it’s so easy my dog can do it!

Peace to you all. After all that is what the season should be about. Peace and love and enjoying each other.

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I really enjoyed this photo Christmas card from old friends. It says so much more than words alone, and it answered all the questions that a Christmas letter couldn’t have.

First of all, who doesn’t love a wedding? The photo is delightful with the contrast between dark tones and light tones. And it doesn’t hurt that all these very photogenic people are beaming. Can’t you just feel the energy? What a photographer!

The last time I saw this family, the younger “kids” were in high school. It was really fun to see them all grown up with the people in their lives. As I told the mom, when I asked permission to use the photo card in Greeting Card Tips, it’s hard to tell who the parents are anymore.

On another note, this custom photo greeting card would have made an extremely thoughtful keepsake, if sent as a thank you card to friends and family who attended the wedding. People who love and care for this family will undoubtedly keep this card for a long time. 

To my old friends, a very special thank you for sending your holiday card in the first place, sharing your joy, and for letting me share it on my blog.

Congratulations and best wishes to the newly weds,  ”E & M,” too!

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I just wanted to share one of the customized Christmas Cards I did last year.  Here’s the front of the card.

I fell in love with this photo of a sculpture of Santa at the Beach. While his permanent home is on the West Coast, I couldn’t help but borrow his likeness and turn him into a dear old Santa at Miller Beach, Indiana. Miller Beach is my home, along with a whole lot of really cool people, who love living on the southern shores of Lake Michigan.

Maybe this is not the way you imagine Santa, but he is just too cool! He is a sculpture, designed and created by Lisa Gapen, who I’ve known for about 13 years. In fact in another life, she helped us train our blind and deaf cocker spaniel, long before we realized that he had any vision problems. He was a “ring-tail tooter” of a puppy. He’ll be featured in another custom Christmas Card soon.

One of Lisa’s hobby’s is custom designing Santas. She is quite an artist. Because I wanted to give her credit in my custom greeting card last year, I  inserted the information below into this card that went out to my Miller Beach neighbors.

Here’s the credit insert that was in the card last year:
We are so excited to share my favorite photo of Lisa Gapen’s
holiday creations with you. May it bring you a smile.
Lisa Gapen is a sculptor and artist in Northwest Indiana. Each piece is a
one of a kind sculpture made from plymer clay with a wire frame and soft
sculpted body with handmade costumes. Many of the accessories are hand
made by the artist as well. More of Lisa’s work can be seen at
www.theGrandfatherClaus.com

Hint: if you have a friend who is an artist, maybe you can use a photo of their work and turn it into a custom photo greeting card that gets framed by some of the people who receive it.

Share the Joy, spread the smiles, build connections.

Click on the button below, fill in the form, and you can send two custom photo cards of yours on me.

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Are Christmas Greeting Cards on your mind today or are you exhausted after getting up at 3:30 this morning to take advantage of all those great sales at the malls across America? 

Did you take the time last week to get out your Thanksgiving Greeting Cards? Whether you are a business-minded person, in sales or an entrepreneur, if you didn’t take advantage of Thanksgiving holiday to remind your clients or customers how much you really appreciate them, all is not lost, but it is an opportunity that I hope you will take advantage of next year.

I’ll come up with some other ideas as we travel this holiday and 2009, building connections that deepen relationships in your personal and busines life.  Below you will find a custom card that I designed and sent to all the members of my Garden Lane Community Supported Agriculture friends. I promise it isn’t the most beautiful Thanksgiving card ever designed, but it was a meaningful one to me and the farmers. It was my small tribute to their great contributions to me personally, to our neighborhood, and agriculture as a whole.

Thanksgiving and harvest end go together, and this card was meant to celebrate our organic farmers, their hardworking crews, the challenges they faced from Mother Nature and our connection as fellow shareholders from our neighborhood along the southern shores of Lake Michigan.

This is the cover of my custom card:

 Autum leaves, surrounding and a blue IKEA bag…
Probably doesn’t mean much to you, but to members of Garden Lane Community Supported Agriculture, it means anticipation of late Wednesday afternoons full of delicious produce.

That’s the purpose of a custom greeting card. One of the farmers commented, “It is one of a kind!” Don’t think you’ll find one like it at Hallmark. But that really is the purpose of the card store. They create generic cards to meet the needs of people who think generically. That may be fine with medications, but not so with greeting cards. Besides this greeting card cost me a fraction of the cost of one of the generic brands.

Here’s the inside of the card, featuring pictures of the farmers, their crews, farm creatures, and the flood. 

Here’s the crew harvesting or planting garlic, a diversity garden, boats used to harvest squash and pumpkins after the flooding, more crew and farmers, and flooding. Then more pictures of the crews and the beautiful veggies. The labor that it takes to get those blue bags to the shareholders is incomprehensible. They work in sleet, rain, mud, flood, heat, drought and mosquitoes.   How noble and organic!

Then there’s pics of the farm creatures, including the canines, spider, a frog, and praying mantis-an eco-system in action. This is followed by lament that the season is over. Notice this was a campaign I designed so I could send it to all the members & farmers. The system I use has a mail merge feature (FirstName & SpouseName), which personalizes my cards for large mailings. I did go back in and wrote special notes in the cards to the farmers & neighborhood leaders of our CSA.

The front of the card ends with my comment, brought to you by….  So when someone opened this 3 panel card, there are the pictures of our farmers. One shows 4 generations of one family and the other is from a newspaper article, featuring the other farmers.

Custom greeting cards are vitally important, if you want to connect to the people who are important to you. Graphic designers could probably add a lot to my idea, but with the system I use I did this in minutes, from pictures the farmers included in their weekly email newsletters. And it was terrific fun, too!

If you would like more information about the fantastic system that I use, please email me at Patricia@GreetingCardTips.com or visit my site www.RememberChristmasCards.com. Anyone visiting the Remember will receive a FREE gift account and will be able to send a couple greeting cards, using your own photos in the cards, on me for FREE. You will also receive a FREE CD IN THE MAIL from me describing the system, so make sure your mailing information is correct.

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