Ultimate Christmas Card Ordering, Writing, & Mailing Checklist

By Leanne Tremblay

 

This year, it's going to be different! This year, I'm going to have my Christmas cards written, addressed and in the mail by December 10th. Here's how I'm going to do it, and you can too.

Take ultimate holiday photo

• Gotta be done by October 31st.

• Seriously.

• Take advantage of great light and beautiful outdoor scenes.

• Take LOTS of photos so you have a variety of poses, expressions and settings to choose from.

• If there's no snow in October where you live but you want a snowy theme in your photos, consider cropping parts of winter scenes from last year's pictures, or downloading a snowy photo from istockphoto.com. Add these images to multi-photo or mosaic style cards in which you can mix people and theme photos.

• It's NOT cheating. It's artistic.

Design ultimate Christmas photo card

• Get inspired by designs at Tiny Prints and Shutterfly (my personal faves)

• Choose a folded or flat card design with clean lines and crisp colors.

• Decide between one design for both personal and business friends or two different cards ( Tiny Prints has its own business Christmas card line you can see here).

• Upload photos to online album and drop into card design.

• Try various photos to get the right look.

• Craft the message for the front (and inside of the card if folded card).

• Save project, then sleep on it.

Create the ultimate Christmas card list

• Complete by the end of November.

• Access your family address book, email software and sticky notes in the bottom of your purse. Put them all together in one place (either online or on paper)

• This year, create a personal list AND business list.

Order cards, address labels and stamps

• Order EVERYTHING by November 15th. This date should give you more than enough shipping leeway.

• This year, save loads of time by ordering address labels that coordinate with the cards, or a simple self inking address stamp.

• For cards and labels, I'm going with Tiny Prints or Shutterfly

• For stamps: PhotoStamps.com or USPS.com (US Postal Service)

• Goal is to have all materials on hand by December 1st.

Write and address cards

• Write and address all cards like MAD December 1st to December 10th.

• Even though you'll have a fabulously creative Christmas sentiment pre-printed on the card, signing each card by hand is nice ...especially for business greeting cards.

Mail cards by the deadline and be transformed into a Christmas card goddess

• Come h*** or high water, mail cards by December 10th.

• Technically you have until December 20th for 1st Class Mail but we'll just pretend not to know that.

Done!

Here are my favorite cards this year. How to choose? See 2008 Christmas Photo Card Gallery