Postcards Christmas cards

I’m thrilled with our Christmas card this year! We ended up doing postcards with, thanks to the tip from my friend .

I love postcards. I love that they are double sided. I love that there is no waste (no envelope). I love that you can just write a little blurb with a sharpie on back. I love that it was no extra cost to have the corners rounded.

I had fun designing the front and back. I used Picasa (love Picasa!). I love how I was able to add our address into the design on the back of the card (image below) – the sharpie is laying on top of it (hiding it from the crazies). I added in the word Post Card just for fun.

I always try to make sure that the year is printed on the card, just so I can remember years down the road which card is which.

Because we were late in mailing out our card this year, I mailed a card to ourselves just to see how long it would take to get back to us (have you ever done that?) I also always save about 6 cards for our scrapbooks and a possible craft project.

Here are a few things that I learned from this years card:

– a tip from my friendly post office man: Rubberband about 25 (or so) post cards together when you drop them in the mail to make them run through the system more efficiently. I guess postcards don’t go through the mail the same way that regular letters do.

– I had stamped them with a 28 cent postcard stamp not realizing that 5×7 size postcards require a regular 44 cent stamp. Thank heaven they make a 17 cent stamp.

-Per card, they ended up not costing that much more than what we have done in years past. In years past, I have just used a 4×6 print (cheap!) and then added text using picasa or picnik (both free!). These postcards could be a lot less expensive if we had gone with the 4×6 size, bringing down both the cost of the print and the stamp.

Here is the cost breakdown, because I love to see stuff like this:

I love Christmas cards. As an adult, they are one of my favorite things about this time of year. With all the technology we have access too, Christmas cards in the mail is something I hope never goes away.