Don't you wish you could make your Christmas card so creative and fun that people will be talking about it for years to come? I have literally looked through tens of thousands of cards on my quest for 150 of the best cards I could find for a book I was doing. In the process, I found that the most interesting cards had one thing in common. Whether they were shot by a professional photographer or by Dad, they were invariably well planned out ahead of time. The kiss of death for a family photo is to put everyone in front of the camera and just pray for good results! Here are a few pointers on how you can plan ahead and come up with an interesting and memorable card.
1) Create a story around a pun or a punch line for the inside of the card. A few good puns I've come across are "Fishing you a Merry Christmas", "Have a Fairy Merry Christmas"; "Happy Hollandaise"; "Sleep in Heavenly Peas"; "Hoe, Hoe, Hoe"; or "Hope your Christmas is TuTu good". How easy would it be to get an adorable photo of your little girl in a Tutu with that last line? Images pop into my mind with all of these puns. Grandpa or your kids are probably good at thinking up a few more puns to play with.
2) Try putting the words "Happy Holidays" or whatever greeting you want to say inside the photo instead of inside the card. Have your kids stand on top of a mountain or in a lake holding a sign. Or it would be amazing to write the Christmas Greeting on their T-shirts or tummies. Or you could try to have each child hold a single letter spelling out JOY, NOEL or HO HO HO.
3) Give the kids something fun to do, or an activity. If you're taking your Christmas picture in the summer, for example, have them sledding down a dune, making an angel in the sand or building a sand snowman. It's also good to do something unexpected because when things are unexpected, they're funny. For example, one of my favorite cards is of a man and his dog. The dog is dressed in a suit and glasses, the man has a bone in his mouth. It is hysterical.
4) Dressing up can also make for a funny card, if you are all in "Incredibles" outfits for example, the caption could be "Have an Incredible New Year". Or, another one of my favorite cards is one in which the family is dressed as garden gnomes with the caption "Gnome for the Holidays". I also love the pun of course.
All of the photos ideas I mentioned above should only take 5 minutes to shoot. That's all that your family will give you anyway, right? Christmas cards don't need to be stressful, in fact the process should be fun. If you come up with an idea ahead of time, your Christmas picture will practically shoot itself. There is nothing like the pride you will feel when people put your card in a prominent place on their mantle piece. I would love to see what you come up with. Hope you have a fun and Happy Holiday!
I am the author of "Merry Christmas From...150 Christmas cards you wish you'd received", a compilation of 150 of the best most inspired Christmas cards I could find after searching through tens of thousands. I also have a website http://merrychristmasfrom.com which is devoted to Christmas cards. You can share your creative card and be inspired by the creative cards others have done. Or if you don't have a card to share, you can create it with some simple tools which enable you to upload your photo, add borders, Santa hats, snowflakes, stars etc. You can also add your own faces to animated e-cards, or create other interactive e-cards. It's everything you need to create an amazing card this Christmas! Come check us out.
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