Custom Thank You Cards

One thing I like to do after Callum's birthday and Christmas is send thank you cards to everyone who is kind enough to give him presents, and I really like to make my own using my photos as I think they add a nice personal touch.

I'm way ahead of myself this year and have actually already got his Christmas thank you cards done! (what a good mommy I am!) The reason being we had lots of lovely white snow last week, and I figured it was as good a time as any to try and take a photo for the thank you cards.

I used a chalkboard sign for these. A nicer chalkboard would have been lovely, but not having one to hand I took the chalkboard from a plastic art easel and used that instead.  My drawing of thank you is a bit wobbly - if you have more time,  patience and skill than me these would have worked out a bit nicer!

Here is a tip for those moms who want their children to hold up or stand beside any type of sign in the photo - be quick, especially if they are younger. They will be intrigued for about thirty seconds so frame the shot with the sign in place before drafting them in. It wasn't until I was taking the shots that I noticed that annoying bird feeder in the background - if I had taken the time to frame the shot before taking him in I would have noticed!  

So, as usual, I got less than a minute (literally - first image was taken at 10.39, final image taken at 10.40, plus a few others after it!) before the inevitable happened........

Boys, don't you just love 'em. 

Of course, if you fancy doing your own custom cards you can do something similar in lots of different ways, so I thought I'd share some of my other ideas for cards here.

Banner 

Another idea is to make a banner spelling out thank you. My idea had originally been to print each letter onto a piece of card (maybe about 6 x 4) and rope these together to make a banner saying thank you.  I just didn't have the time with Christmas coming up (and actually it might be harder to get him to hold this up!!) but I'm going to use for his next birthday thank you cards! 

Digitally Add Text 

Another really simple idea is to use an existing picture and just digitally add text over the top of the image saying thank you. This is what I did with his birthday cards -  I used his three year old photo pictures and just added some text along the bottom. If you are purposely taking a photo to use for cards, it's best to think about where you are going to put the text when you take the photo, so you don't crop too tight.

Use Letter Mats
You can digitially spell out thank you using the letters as custom mats. This one you will need a good understanding of Photoshop for (or you can buy the templates which are super easy to use)  This one I have shown uses wedding photos, but I think it would be just as cute to use pictures of your kids - ones taken throughout the year might be a nice touch for birthday thank you cards.

These are just some ideas - if you are more design oriented you can of course make up custom designs in Photoshop, or if you can just drop one of your photos into one of the many templates that most printers provide. 

Just another way to use some of your photos this Christmas!