Christmas Cards

I had our Christmas cards done early this year... and proceeded to send them out the week before Christmas. 🫤 That's about par for the course for me. 

I ordered them from Shutterfly. I've done most of our Christmas cards throughout the years from Shutterfly. I am familiar with their site, they have a large selection and I was ordering a photo book and other items from Shutterfly in November. 

I like how the card turned out for the most part. I used photos from our trip to Maine for the card. I don't have a huge number of family pictures or pictures of all three kids from the trip. In some ways that made it easier- I simply did not have a lot of pictures from which to chose. But I will always be a little disappointed in not having a lot of photos. 

The default "Merry Christmas" on the front of the card was in red and in a different font. But I was able to customize the font and color so I did just that. I chose blue to match the water theme of the pictures. The greeting itself was customizable. I could have written Happy Hanukkah or Happy Holidays or anything that fit in the text box. 

The card is a tri fold which I like because it's different. The size of it, though, is a little awkward. I probably won't do a tri fold in the future but I'm not sorry that I did it this year.

The middle front panel- I could not change the font or color of the word "The" so it remained red. 

Again, in this text box, I could have written anything and in whatever font, color or size (within a certain parameter).

On the first panel of the back, I used a different font to denote a shift in the card from Christmas to New Years and then wrote a brief 2022 update.

The second two panels of the back... 

Overall I was pleased with the card.  A couple of the pictures turned out darker on the card than I was hoping for. But the pictures definitely depict us and our time in Maine and that was the main point!

I think I mentioned this before but I was able to get free address labels from Shutterfly. I could have chosen a stock picture or a custom photo. No choice really, um, obviously the latter!! I was not able to change the color from red to another color. If I would have been able to, I would have changed it to blue ;).

Doing this card in a non traditional color scheme reminded me of another unique card from years ago. I dug through my pile of old Christmas cards to find it. 

I loved the citrusy colors of this card (I could not change the color or font of anything- just the text with our name in it was customizable) and thought they went well with beach photos, particularly with the girls and my dresses.

On the back I included pictures to represent activities/ trips from the year.

I had forgotten about this one- it's a bit non traditional though it's mostly a shade of green- just not the green green that's usually associated with Christmas. I'm pretty sure I picked it because I thought it looked good with the kids' clothes. Again with the clothes! I guess there has to be a reason to pick a card and looking good with the clothes that people are wearing is just as good a reason as any. These pictures were all taken at Donnie's sister's wedding. 

A theme that is consistent throughout all the years that I've done cards is that I choose designs where numerous pictures can be displayed. I'm a picture person, what else can I say?