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 – 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!