On Sending Joy
Every year before Thanksgiving my amazing sister in law wins the race yet again and we get an adorable holiday card in the mail from her and although I always think next year I’ll get it out faster, I also smile while I get out the tape and pop it on a big empty wall that slowly gets filled with photos, stories, and sweet notes from people I love most. Last year, since we were home all the damn time and missed out on seeing people as much as we hoped, I moved the cards into our stairway, where they still live. Every trip to the laundry room or down to grab the markers we constantly tell them not to bring upstairs is greeted with our friends, family, teachers, arborist, clients, and students.
So, since I’ve been looking at them all year, I’m
1. really excited for a fresh batch, and
2. wanted to share some!
<<< Photo taken of me today with year old cards that I still love :)
I recently moved my gallery system over to pic-time! Your galleries will now be linked to a beautiful shop that offers new items including photo cards. I migrated all galleries over so if you’d like me to turn your pic-time gallery on, please let me know!
Keep it simple with 1 big photo.
I love this one with a sweet colorful note and one big beautifully printed photo. On the back are some printed close ups, their names (how often I forget some of the kiddos’ names of old friends from out of town) and ages of the kids. This has photos I took and printed at walgreens photo which surprises me because the quality is pretty great…I’m betting it’s an upgraded print on cardstock.
Make it a postcard!
The postcard options at minted are stinkin beautiful! They’re on nice thick paper, the colors look great, and you can put a photo on the back so that it doesn’t leave you with a space to fill with a million notes…as lovely as those are, they take forever! Although one of my friends got her kiddo to draw on ours and that was amazing! Beach photo by me, pumpkin one likely by a timer :).
Make it interesting!
A good friend of mine was so great at planning adventures for her family during the pandemic and I believe the story is that at one of their getaways her daughter wore this bird mask pretty much the whole time. And oh my goodness I love this family, as this is what they used for their card. Their super creative, unexpected card still just makes my heart so happy! Photos by the bird’s parents, “all in one” printed at minted, lovely quote by Emily Dickinson.
Who says it has to be a Christmas Card?
I love this sweet black and white image of the kids on a colorful and simple New Year’s card. The joy of this card really reminds me of the joy of this family- filled with life and love. Perfect. They added some fun and silly photos on the back, and included the dog! Photo by me, printed at paper culture which has eco friendly products.
In fact, is there a holiday that’s special to you?
There’s never a bad time to send a card out to friends and family. I love this Lunar New Year card that also got to share this family’s beautiful new addition. Photo by me, printed at minted where there are many Lunar New Year designs!.
Hire an artist!!
What a fun way to share someone’s art with your friends! This card by Nolan Harris just may have been the reason I kept our cards this year. It’s just so fun and I wanted to keep looking at it! Also, this family is such joy makers that it makes me double happy.
A couple other tips on cards:
Consider your local printshop! Last year I had ours printed on cardstock at Top Notch Copy and Print. I’ve gotten to know the owner and it’s such a beautiful small family business. I’ll print our super fun holiday “card” there this year ;) after I design it. If you’d like to use a local printshop, you could buy a design off of etsy and ask the printshop to help with sizing/file sharing.
If you can and haven’t yet, finally sit down and type up your addresses on a spreadsheet then you can print them on labels. It takes a while to set up, but it’s reallllll smooth to have them ready to stick on.
I hope you have fun with this! And if you want to send me a card, please know that it actually does bring me joy and I’ll likely never let that little piece of tree get trashed…who needs wallpaper anyway?