Handmade photo cards for Valentine's Day and a free printable

What could be more personal and thoughtful than giving your sweetheart a Valentine card that you created yourself? It's so easy to make keepsake cards for the holidays or a special occasion using your photos and some basic card making tools.

For Valentine's Day I am giving my husband this handmade card. I created it using a picture that was taken of us at the Eiffel Tower last year. The card took less than an hour to make because I was able to print the photo at home on my photo printer. The hardest part about making the card was trying to decide which photo to use!

Photo cards don't have to be really complicated to look good. So keep it simple!

Gather your materials: blank cards and envelopes, photos, glue dots or two-sided tape, decorative tape, scissors, ruler and a pencil. It's also nice to have a large paper cutter, paper punches, cardstock, scrap paper, stamps, ink pads and ribbons.

You can purchase blank cards at most arts and craft stores or make your own using cards using cardstock. 

To help get you started on making your own handmade card for Valentine's Day, I created a free download with six different love themed sayings.

 I prefer to cut my photos using large paper punches or my paper cutter because I can quickly and easily crop photos into perfect shapes.

My tip for using paper punches - position your photo in the paper punch so that you can see what you are cutting out before you punch.

For the best results, always use glue dots or two-sided tape to attach your photo to your card. Washi tape and glitter tape make nice decorative elements to use on your cards.

If you prefer not to cut your photos, another option is to cut a hole on the card front using the paper punches and add your photo to the inside of the card as shown above.

I created this free printable with saying that are suitable for Valentine's day, wedding or  anniversary cards. Simply download the file and print the second page onto cardstock. Cut the sayings out and add them to your handmade cards.

Like the idea of creating more cards using your photos? Want a little more inspiration? Check out Roam New Roads and my video tutorial for handmade photo cards.

Set up a photo backdrop to take pictures of family and friends

Last year my husband's Grandmother asked me to take some photos of her with all of her grand and great grand children when we were together for the holidays. She knows that I always have my camera on hand and love to take photos.

We celebrated Grandma's 99th birthday this weekend and I decided to surprise her by setting up a photo backdrop in my kitchen so I could photograph her with everyone at the party.

I knew that the natural light in the kitchen would be the best spot to photograph at the time of day that I would be shooting. I made an assortment of paper and tissue paper elements to hang as a backdrop and hung some paper lanterns. I was going to cover up my vintage sign with a canvas drop sheet but I liked the look of it with the paper decorations and it became part of the set up. 

I used a chair and a small table with Grandma's birthday cake as props. I tested the set up with my daughter before the birthday guests arrived to make sure that back drop was going to work for both sitting and standing.

Grandma loved the photo backdrop and was so happy to have her photo taken with everyone. We had a lot of fun taking the photos and you can tell from all of the smiles when you look at the pictures.

A little later in the day, I surprised Grandma again by presenting her with a gallery frame filled with photos that I had just shot and printed at home. She left the party with not just memories of the day but something that she could hang in her home right away. 

This diy concept is a fun idea for more than just birthday parties! I would do this for a baby or bridal shower, wedding or anniversary party and of course, during the holidays.

The best part for me was being able to print the photos right away so I could frame them and present them as our gift. I really like that my Canon Pixma Pro-100 photo printer can print photos up to 13" x 19" because I can purchase almost any frame that I want and I know that I won't have to worry about the photo size.

Here's a few more of the photos that I shot at the party ...

I posted this collage photo on Instagram after the party was over ... 

and here's a close up of the birthday cake that I decorated and used as a "prop" in some of the photos.

I hope that you have the opportunity to take lots of photos in the next few days with your family and friends.

Smile!

personalize holiday cards and gifts with photos

Are you ready for the holidays? The countdown is on! My cards are in the mail, I've started gift wrapping many of our gifts and I can't wait to start my holiday baking this weekend. 

I take photos of my family all year round and for the past 21 years I have tried to incorporate a few of my favourite photos into my holiday crafting projects. Today I'm going to share with you a couple of the things that I did with my photos this year.  

I shot photos of my daughters on the beach of Lake Erie this summer and I was originally planning to use one of the pictures on the front of our Christmas cards as I always do. But I ended up doing something a little different this year. I purchased these holiday cards and personalized them on the inside with my photos.

I cropped and re sized my photo to fit the inside of my cards and added a holiday message using Photoshop. I didn't have a lot of spare time to make my cards so I printed my photos at home on my Canon PIXMA Pro-100. I love my photo printer because the photos look like they were professionally printed and I know that the colours won't fade over time.

I set up my photos so I could print twelve at a time on 13"x19" sheets of photo paper. I cut the photos out using my large paper cutter. You could use scissors to trim your pictures but a paper cutter is quicker and your finished photos look more professional.

My premade Christmas cards had rounded corners so I used the Crop-a-dile corner chomper to round the corners on my photos as well. I really like this corner cropping tool because it allows me to crop four or five pieces of paper at a time. I use glue dots to attach my photos to the cards. 

And there you go! I personalized 80 cards in just a couple of hours!

The other project that I wanted to show you are my holiday photo gift tags ...

I've created these for my family gift for many years. I like to number the backs of my daughters' photo gift cards so they have to open their gifts in the order of the tags. It makes Christmas morning a little more fun as we watch them hunt for which present to open next. 

For this project I sized and cropped my photos in Photoshop to fit my tag shaped paper punch. I printed them on my PIXMA Pro-100 photo printer at home so I would have better control of my picture size for this project. I was able to print eight tags at once using 8.5"x11" sheets of photo paper. I like to add baker's twine to my gift tags so I added a hole to each tag using this single hole punch. 

Here's a close up of one of my gift tags on a small kraft gift box that I embellished with lace and gold glitter tape, a deer figurine and a mini bottle brush tree. 

Stay tuned ... I have a few other projects that I'm working on for the holidays!