Buying Christmas Photo Cards on the Cheap

I absolutely love receiving Christmas cards in the mail!  I’m not sure everyone loves reading about what others have been up to, but I sure do!  I especially love the photo cards that come in all sorts of shapes, designs, colors, and styles.  I have never sent one myself, so I was probably a little too excited to send one with my new hubby this year.  We knew we wanted a colorful photo card that held many photos (since we have a hard time choosing just one or two from our wedding and engagement photos), and we wanted it to feel a little retro since we are both drawn to all things retro.

I tell ya, there are tons of amazing design and print shops out there that sell high-end, creatively-designed photo cards for not too much money.  Here are some of our favorites on the good ole world wide web:

Shutterfly

Tiny Prints

Pear Tree Greetings

SnapFish

The Stationery Studio

Minted

However, we are extremely frugal people.  At $1-$2 per card, we would have ended up spending $50-$100 just on 50 photo cards – that sometimes doesn’t include envelopes and never includes stamps.  That price was just way too high for our budget.  I mean, I am a girl who buys a huge amount of high-end clothes from Goodwill for $50; I’m not about to fork out a ton of dough on a yearly card.  I’m not bashing any of the prices any company sells their cards at – they are usually worth it.  However, we are all about getting the best deal we can.  I’m sure one year we will want to splurge on the cards, but this is not our year for crazy Christmas spending.

So, we started looking elsewhere.  Vistaprint is a great place for finding amazing prices on printable items.  However, we are usually a little disappointed with their selection.  Perhaps we just have a different style than most of the styles they carry.  We also looked at discount retail stores like Target and Walmart.  That’s where we hit the jackpot!  Although we weren’t crazy-in-love with most of the designs at either store, we did find one that was extremely appealing to us on the Walmart site.  Check out this beauty (no that’s not us – that’s the generic photo from the website):



We loved the red and blue (it is red and blue in person not an orange as the photo above suggests) and the ability to mix and match a bunch of photos.  It even has a little rectangle in the bottom right corner for a personalized message.  The best part?  The price – they are only 40 cents a piece, meaning for 50, they only cost $20!  Score!  Also, since we live near a few Walmarts we could have them shipped to the store for free.  I was a little impatient, so I paid a couple more bucks to have them printed in the one hour photo, but they do ship to the store for free if you are willing to wait a couple days.

Here it is in all of its glory:



Ah!  So beautiful!  We would’ve loved to have used photos from one whole yearly photo shoot, but since we’ve had so many photos taken in the past year and a half (wedding and engagement), we chose to stick with those photos for our card this year and spice it up with our first yearly photo session next year.  Most of our wedding guests haven’t seen our wedding photos either, so this will be a nice little treat if they were interested in seeing them.  Mr. Converse Sneakers thinks we are vain for plastering our photos all over the card (he says the same thing about our gallery wall), but I think it’s sweet!  I love receiving them from other people and looking at their photos.  I hope other people feel the same way so I’m not left looking incredibly vain!  I’m so vain…I probly thing this card is about me…


Just for fun, here’s another angle:



I think I will keep one of each every year to look back on.  I love looking back on our save-the-dates, programs, and wedding invitations, so I’m sure I’ll love looking back on Christmas cards every year.  I can’t wait to show them to our future kiddos as well.  Maybe I’ll think of something fun to do with them as they pile up over the years.

As for sending a letter with the cards, we don’t really know what we would say.  I like reading Christmas letters, but they usually come from people with children.  I think ours would say something like, “Hey!  We got married this year!  It was really fun!  Merry Christmas!” which is a little boring and probably a little too perky, but perky should be my middle name.  So, you can see why we aren’t sending a letter.  We’re hoping the colorful, great bang for not a lot of buck cards will be enough to send to our loved ones.

Do you send cards out during this time of year?  Do you accompany a card with a letter?  Do you write something sweet to each family individually?  I’m highly interested in what you all do when it comes to Christmas cards!  Keep me posted in the comments.

Note: I am not affiliated in any way with any of the companies mentioned in this post.  I simply like to spread good cheer about companies who have products I like and ones that help me score a great deal!  Enjoy!


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