Christmas Cards on a Budget

Things are going to be a little tight around here for Christmas this year. We are paring down our gift giving, not buying any new Christmas decorations, etc.

If you're like me, I like to send and receive Christmas cards! But they can be so expensive, if you want them personalized. Personalized photo cards can cost between 33 cents (from sites like Wal-mart.com) and the upwards of $1.25 if you order them from custom sites.

The past couple of years I have ordered our Christmas cards from Vistaprint. By watching specials I have been able to get 100 quality personalized cards with envelopes for about $35.00. (100? Yes, I told you I like to send Christmas cards. I don't actually mail that many though. Of course I mail out-of-town cards. But, I also utilize church "mailbox" options and donate money to missions instead.)

This year, though, I have been playing with Scrapblog.com. I have figured out how to make birthday party invitations and other cards with it. And then it occurred to me ... I can make our own personalized Christmas cards on that site and have them printed for about 10 cents each!

How do I accomplish that? By designing my own page, save it on my computer as a .jpeg, download it for printing at Walgreens.com when they are having a 10 cent special for 4x6 prints, and mail!

So, that's what I did this year. I just picked them up and they look great! Of course I can't show you the final product just yet. But, here are a couple of other things I have done recently:

I am currently designing birthday party invitations for Kyndal's "Friday the 13th" birthday party and Eli's "Mario Brothers" birthday party. I'll post those when they are done.

So, give it a try this year and save yourself some extra bucks.