A few months ago I wrote a post about storing and sharing photos. Click here to check it out again, it is a good intro to what I am going to expand on this post.
Again I am going to talk about photos. First I want to remind all of you to think back to when you actually printed off a bunch and made an album out of them. Most of us just slide them off to someone in an email and then hope that if they really want the printed version, they print it themselves- PHEW! You are off the hook!
But it is Christmas or Holiday time, excuse my reference is not meant to offend, we celebrate Christmas at my house that is all.
As I mentioned previously, I have been using webshots as a storage service and sharing service primarily. I don’t know when they started offering cards, mugs, mousepads, etc. but they do have it and I must say I missed it.
Last Sunday (Sunday BEFORE Thanksgiving) I designed my own Christmas Card for the second year through shutterfly.com. I was happy with the service last year and the quality was terrific. This year with the economy the way it is, if you cut back on sending out holiday cards, cut out going to the local Hallmark store and buying just “any old” card, or believe that people don’t get through those family letters you may be eager to send!
Go to Shutterfly and you can very easily do it yourself. With your photo and your design, you pick from some templates-plop your photos in, retry if it isnt what you think it should be and then approve the proof. You can save it in a draft form and finalize whenever you want!
Surprisingly, these cards are a lot cheaper than the plain old (yes pretty- but not customized) Christmas Card. Building a house, or remodeling? Have photos of a vacation, pets or kids to share? These make wonderful memories for your friends & family to see. I also made some calendars with my photos of sunsets from our camp overlooking the water that would give some family (that moved away) some relief from stress at work. They were very reasonable – like $15.99 or something! It is a custom gift and when we all agreed to cut back on Christmas this year, I wanted to make sure that each gift was unique and special – Shutterfly helped me do that – WHO KNEW?
AND I told you it was last Sunday I placed the order? They arrived on Tuesday (2 days later!) and that was standard shipping and they looked just the way I wanted them to. I even have half of them addressed!
I recommend Shutterfly and Webshots because I use them. I know there are many other services out there, so if you have an experience to share, please comment and let us know, we would love to hear it!!