Make your own creative Christmas card

Of course, you can pop to the shop and buy a stack of Christmas cards, but the best ones are those you make entirely yourself. With your own camera on a tripod and a decorated Christmas tree, you’re already well on your way. And with a creative app, you can make your Christmas card even more personal! We’ve rounded up 9 handy tips to help you create a creative Christmas card!

Use your own tree...

Let’s start with the basics: the tree in your living room. You’ve decorated it to your own taste, so it’s the perfect subject! To preserve that warm Christmas atmosphere, don’t use a flash. This naturally means a slower shutter speed, so it’s important to put your camera on a tripod or a sturdy surface. A chair with a stack of books works too. Tripods and mounts are also available for mobile phones.

...or something else

For a truly original Christmas card, you don’t need a Christmas tree at all. You can go for an alternative card instead. If you’re a runner, for example, use a running shoe as the basis, or try an old camera. Add a few Christmas decorations and voilà: you’ve made a personal card nobody else has. Fresh pine branches always add atmosphere, and you can hide unwanted elements behind them.

Compose

Next, it’s all about composition. Pick a section of the tree where a beautiful bauble or the decorations and lights come together. Keep going until you have the perfect shot. Make sure there are no distracting elements in the background, such as a plug socket. Bear in mind that you’ll probably want to add text to the photo as well. For that, it’s important to create an ‘empty’ or blurred area in the image, as text stands out better there.

Photo to your phone

Whatever you take your photo with, you can always get it onto your mobile phone or tablet. Use your camera’s NFC, Bluetooth or Wi-Fi connection, or use a separate card reader. Otherwise, there’s always WeTransfer: send the photo to your phone and save it there. Do keep in mind that camera photos take up a relatively large amount of storage space. It’s therefore wise to either reduce their size or delete the photo again after editing and sending.

Typorama

There are lots of fun apps that let you add text to your photos creatively. For Android, there’s Canva, for example. For this article, we’re using Typorama, available for iOS. All ‘text-on-photo’ apps work in a similar way, but Typorama is one of the most comprehensive. It offers preset crops for Facebook and Instagram (Stories), as well as for various paper sizes, iPhones, Twitter, LinkedIn and the Apple Watch.

Choose your photo

Once the photo is on your phone, open Typorama. You can choose your own photo, but if you don’t have one, take a look at the free stock photos available in the app, which you can use without limits. Among them you’re bound to find some lovely Christmas, fireworks and birthday photos. If you go for the paid Pro version, the selection of photos is even bigger, and you’ll also have many more fonts and styles at your disposal.

Choose your platform

Once you’ve selected a photo, Typorama first asks where and how you want to publish it. If you choose Facebook, for example, Typorama creates a crop that fits a Facebook post or a Facebook cover photo exactly. The same goes for Instagram, which also includes the vertical Stories format. That way, you can always be sure nothing in your composition falls off the edge because the image is too large for the platform. Tap ‘NEXT’ once you’ve made your choice.

Compose your card

You’ll now see the text ‘DOUBLE TAP TO EDIT TEXT’ in the image, with a bar of available fonts below it. First enter your text, then swipe right to choose a font. Tap a font to see various styles based on it. There’s plenty to choose from! As long as there’s a frame around the text, you can move it, enlarge or shrink it, change its colour, add shadows, and much more.

Choose a second text

You can now choose to share the card: tap ‘OK, SHARE’ and you’re done. To add a second or third text (for example the sender) in a different font, don’t choose ‘OK, SHARE’, but tap the plus sign at the top centre of the screen. Then proceed as you did with the first text. You can always go back a step. Have fun and good luck! Oh, and one more tip: take a few extra photos of your Christmas tree now, so you’ll be done even faster next year.