We had some family photos taken, then I used Photoshop to combine a photo of the three of us and a photo of Evie into a 6 x 7½ picture. I intentionally left white space at the bottom of the picture, then I had the photo printed at Costco as one of their 6 x 7½ photo cards. The price is hard to beat since it was $14.99 for 50 cards, plus envelopes (which are lined with silver foil! Fancy!), AND it came with four extra photo calendars.
In the white space at the bottom of the photo cards, I did a little paper crafting to personalize the cards a bit more. I ended up going with a design that involved some stamping (Papertrey Ink and Savvy Stamps), patterned paper (Carta Bella), vellum, and washi tape (We R Memory Keepers and mt), with blue, grey, and purple as the colors:
The design was off to the left side, so that I could write a note on the right.
It was a good balance of cost effectiveness and craftiness - I was happy with how the cards turned out and I'm already (casually) mulling over 2014 holiday card possibilities :D. I mailed most of them off middle of last week and even then, I felt like I was cutting it close to Christmas, but I've heard that people in town have been getting them. I still have a couple left to hand-deliver, mainly the ones for my mom and my dad.
