Does anyone here make their own Christmas cards?

A nice thought. I remember a friend of mine some years ago asked me to create Christmas cards for her with a photo of her young son to give to family members.

It has never occurred to me to try printing the labels. I imagine the designing is simple enough and the result could look quite effective, but my main concern would be cutting them out of card because I do not know of any pre-scored card available.

Sometimes we also make our own lables for the gifts. Either my son makes them out of cardboard or we print out little pictures of him and the person receiving the gifts. This is particularly popular with the older generation, I know one uncle has a big collection of cards and lables from us that he treasures like gold. Kids just throw it all away.

I have done this for a couple of other people in the past, but I have never added my own photograph to a Christmas card. I think it would be unfair to send someone a Christmas card with my picture in it.

LOL...it's fun though. Mind you it was 10 years ago before kids were thought up. I might just have the kids make some this year as a family project with construction paper and glitter. (I don't have a long list)

I should expect that if the children make them, then people will value them more.

It must have been a task to create from Paint. I use Microsoft Word which is a very sophisticated piece of software and it is still a demanding job.

Yes, it can be very time consuming. Nice to know that there are others who are ambitious enough to try it.

It does take a lot of time, but I am not sure how long I spend doing it. I create 2 or 3 different cards, which is a lot of work since a card has 4 pages, then typeset the different names for people that I am sending then to. This way 2 people working together will not get the same one. I make individual cards for my family

You are right, there can be a lot of work involved and it is time consuming, but I enjoy working on the computer so I can live that.

It can seem a rather daunting aspect on the outset, but it is not quite as formidable as it may initially appear.

I have been doing this for a very long time now and I enjoy the making of them too. It can be a little time consuming occasionally, but I always manage to find some time to make a few.

Yes, we are all the mercy of our printers because they can be very fickle at times. It is usually possible to rectify any issues, but that leaves much less time to devote to the actual job of printing.

I fully agree with you, and the reason that the title refers to Christmas Cards is that it was seasonal at the time. All categories of Greetings Cards have the same value and benefit.

At least you are not all giving major companies a huge income for a piece of card.

Yes, the first steps are always the hardest ones.

I agree with you completely, a personalised card is far better.

Yes it certainly can be fun designing and making your own cards. It is also true that the recipient often values the card more because they realise that you have made the effort to create a personal card for them as opposed to simply buying one along with numerous others. I tend to use publishing software and print them on the computer, so once I have created a decent selection of templates it is quite easy to amend the names etcetera in order to personalise it.

I also make cards for a selected few rather than try to create them for everyone that I know.

I imagine that most people still do.

I have only included a photograph once, which was the son of a friend that I created the cards for. She wanted the cards to send to the child's grandparents.

A Christmas tree branch as well, this discussion is filled with original ideas.

I like the idea of adding a little piece of tree to make it that bit more special.

Yes , they look a lot batter. The main problem is remembering what you made for someone last year so that you vary it.