AD | The last couple of years we’ve really enjoyed making handmade gifts and our own wrapping paper for Christmas. I think there is just something special about gifting something that you have made rather than bought. It shows that you have put thought, time and love into it, which in turn shows how much you care about the person you are gifting it to. This year we have been having a go at making our own Christmas Cards. It might seem a bit daunting at first, especially if you’re not particularly artistic or crafty. You really don’t need much to get started though. Just some simple designs and free fonts.
Deciding on What Images To Use
The first thing I did was to look for some Christmas themed images that I could potentially use on a Christmas Card. You could go for traditional images like Christmas trees, holly, Christmas presents, angels etc. Or maybe you want to use more cute or modern images. Please make sure that the images are free to use and not copyrighted. Canva is a good place to use as they have plenty of free images.
Of course, you don’t even have to use any images at all if that’s not your thing. Instead, you could opt for wording using a decorative font.
Personally, I think the most important thing when creating a Christmas Card design is choosing the right fonts to use. You might think that you will have to pay to download fonts and use them. Well, let me tell you that you do not. There are plenty of places that you can download a free font from.
Using the right font in a design can make all the difference
I find it’s best to choose fonts that complement each other. For instance, using a script font with a regular font like in the example above that I quickly put together in Photoshop. Two script fonts usually don’t work well together. Most times I will use a script or handwriting font and then a regular type font. I’ve found that it always works pretty well.
Putting Your Christmas card Design Together
Once you’ve chosen your images and fonts you can then begin to create your design in your favourite graphic design software.
Photoshop is usually my preference as it gives me total freedom to create a design from scratch. If you are already adept at using Photoshop, then this is a great option. You can import your own images, fonts or photos into Photoshop.
This time though I actually decided to use Canva for the images. I didn’t want to add any text in Canva or use any of their fonts because I had already downloaded some free fonts that I wanted to use. They had plenty of Christmas images that were free to use though and also some Christmas Card templates. That made it super easy to design something that I could add text to.
Once I was happy with the design, I downloaded the image from Canva as a PDF file and opened it in Photoshop. From there I was then able to add the text that I wanted to and I could also use the free fonts that I had chosen too. As I had saved the file as a PDF, in addition, it also meant that I could still move the layers around, if I wanted to.
I’ve used Photoshop for about 20 yrs now and even though I have tried other software, I still much prefer it. You could use any graphic design software though that allows you to import your own fonts & images. It doesn’t have to be Photoshop. You might prefer to use GIMP, Illustrator, CorelDraw etc
Pictured above are three of the cards that I designed and the fonts I used were Top: L to R: Nostalgia Script and Heilig Clean and then Bottom: Herina Font.
As you can see I used quite simple designs so they were super quick and easy to make. I had fun designing them too but then I have always loved messing around in Photoshop. I chose to leave the inside of the Christmas cards I designed blank but you could easily add some text similar to what you would find in shop-bought Christmas Cards. It’s really down to your own personal preference.
Having access to lots of free fonts and images made it super easy to design Christmas cards. Plus, it means I also now have the fonts installed so I can use them again in the future for other projects.
Don’t forget to stock up on cheap compatible ink cartridges for your printer before you start pumping out the Christmas cards!
Have you ever designed your own cards or made handmade gifts? let me know in the comments!
Did you enjoy this post or find it useful? If you did, why not pin it so others can read it too!
*This is a Sponsored Post
