DIY Holiday Photo Cards

Good morning! I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving! I am so excited to start posting Christmas crafts!! My favorite kind of crafting! I love Christmas and love crafting anything related to the holidays! Today I am sharing DIY Holiday Photo Cards as my first craft in my series “12 Days of a Handmade Holiday”. 

Last year I had a lot of fun posting a series I called “12 Days of a Handmade Christmas“. I’m back at it again and will be posting 12 new holiday DIY projects between now and Christmas. Some are bigger projects and some are quick and easy – and there will, of course, be some fun free printables and patterns! Happy Holiday crafting, everyone!! :)

On to today’s project – DIY Holiday Photo Cards! I am so excited about these. We usually order our photo cards from places like Shutterfly but this year I was in the mood to make my own. We decided to use a photo of our family taken at the our local zoo’s dinosaur exhibit. All four of us are sitting on top of a Tyrannosaurus Rex. It is such a funny photo we thought we’d go for it and create a fun cheesy dinosaur card – because why not, right? (The photos I used to photograph these cards for this post are not our family photos. I found these fun stock photos from freedigitalphotos.net). 

Below is the tutorial for creating your own photo card. I used Photoshop to design the cards and have included my designs as free printables – on the rare chance you, too, want a dinosaur holiday Card!

Supplies Needed for DIY Holiday Photo Cards:

• Free Printables – Link located at the end of this post :)
• Photos
• White card stock (I use 110 lb Bright White)
• A7 Envelopes
• Corner Punch (optional)
• Glitter Glue
• Glue stick, Easy Stick, tape for adhering your photo
• Paper cutter

STEP 1: Create a card design in Photoshop or print off one of my designs – you can find them under Supplies Needed. If you are creating a design in Photoshop, size your document to 5″x7″ and choose a resolution of 400 pixels/inch or more.

I printed 2 cards per page to not waste any paper.

STEP 2: Cut out cards using a paper trimmer or scissors. For a nice touch, you can use a corner punch to round the corners of your card. I was excited to do this since I have never paid extra for the rounded corners when I’ve ordered cards online.

STEP 3: Adhere your photo to the card. I had to trim my photos down to fit the space. I also trimmed the bottom left corner to go around the back of the Brontosaurus. To make this process go a little quicker, I created a template and cut all the bottom left corners off of my cards first. I then adhered them to the card and trimmed the right side of the photo that hung off the edge.

On the holiday wreath card, I needed to cut the photo in a circle. This is easiest with a circle punch if you have one. I used a tape runner to adhere the photos which was a quicker way than using a glue stick or tape.

STEP 4: Embellish with glitter glue! I wanted the cards to have a little sparkle but didn’t want glitter to get on the recipient of our cards. Glitter glue turned out to be perfect and it was really quick! I used a toothpick to pick up any excess glitter glue. I added red glitter to the dinosaur’s hat and the wreath around his neck.

For the wreath card, I added red glitter to all of the berries. 

I made 40 cards and spent $13.64 (minus stamps) so each card cost 34 cents! That’s pretty good in my book! I had several items on hand which is how I kept the cost down – that, plus coupons! Those Joann coupons can really make a difference – especially the 60% off an item. I kept the background of the cards white so I didn’t use too much ink. I also printed two cards to a page so I only used 20 sheets of paper! The paper I used is my go-to 110lb Neenah white cardstock – which I use for everything.  You can find a source list for all of the supplies below. 

• • A7 Envelopes – Joann Fabric
  • White card stock – Office Depot
  • Photos – I printed through Shutterfly when they were having one of their 4″ x 6″ printing promos!
  • Glitter glue – Joann Fabric
  • Easy Stick pack of 4 – Joann Fabric
  • Martha Stewart Crafts Corner Punch, Rounder
  • Cricut 29-0012 Trimmer

What do you think? Do you make your own Holiday cards? It’s definitely a bit of a time commitment, but two Christmas movies later and my cards were all set to go! I’ll be back Monday with the Second Day of a Handmade Holiday!

Download the Free File! This freebie is in my Resource Library under Free Printables, Cards and Gift Tags. Enter your first name and email to get the password to download this file. You’ll also have a chance to sign up for my newsletter to receive fun craft tutorials, tips, updates and more FREE files to help make crafting something special and unique easier!