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Because you’re a crafter, there’s this expectation that you’ll make your own Christmas cards each year. People often even mention about waiting to see what you’ll ‘come up with’ for the greeting cards for Christmas. And of course, because you make them yourself, they need to be personalised too.
Here’s the reality – this just isn’t always possible. If you make cards to sell, you’ll have a load around the house. But not only are they already in your online shop to sell, but they also aren’t personalised.
And even if you don’t make cards to sell, there’s no guarantee you’ll have the time to make all those special cards for everyone. Not with everything else you’ve got to do for the holidays!
Good news – there’s another way. Here’s my secret tip on how to make personalised Christmas cards when you’re short on time – even if you are a crafter!
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How to make Christmas cards with Canva
The crafter’s secret weapon when it comes to a whole range of things is Canva. If you haven’t used it before, it is a bit like Photoshop only much easier to use and with loads of great features. If you make and sell your crafts, you should definitely be used it for all those marketing jobs.
Over the last few years, Canva has added a ton more features to the platform and one of those is a lifesaver at Christmas – the ability to create cards in the platform then have them printed and sent to you!
You can bring in your own photos, use font freebies to make the designs different and more. If you check out places that offer bundles of fonts, you can often grab a collection of fonts that complement each other and can make your cards even more unique.
Create a basic card template
The first thing you want to do is get together 1-3 basic templates for your cards. These might all have the same image on or you might want to swap this a little, depending on how many cards you need and how specific you want to go with personalisation.
Head over to Canva and search for ‘Christmas Card’ in the top search. This will open a default card that’s 14.8 x 10.5cm. Or you could make it into a 5×7 inch if you prefer inches.
Along the left side, there will be a load of templates that help you get started. The best thing about them is they are fully customizable. Pick one to start with.
If there’s a few you like, press the little + button in the right-hand corner of the canvas and another page opens. Then you can pop another template into it. Do this as many times as you like.
Personalising the template
Once you have a few templates you like, you can start personalising them.
Start with the words – are they what you want to say? You can easily just double click the text and change these to something different. You can add people’s names or other personal details. Or use phrases you would use in real life.
You can also change the font used and the colour of it. There are loads of cool fonts within Canva and if you have a Pro account (or take a free trial of one) you can upload those free fonts you download elsewhere into it.
You just might find you need to resize the image as different fonts are different sizes! With this one, the new font is bigger than the old one so I need to select the Merry Christmas and make it a little smaller to still fit properly in the space.
Using photos in the templates
The other good thing about Canva templates is that you can easily import photos and use them in your templates. So if you have a picture of you, your family, the cat or dog or anything else you want to add, it is simple.
Take the template you want to add the photo to and select Elements in the menu. Then you can go frames and see a whole range of shapes with grass, sky and a cloud on – these are ready for an image to be added to them.
Or if you want to get clever, go down to grids and select a single image. This will fill the template but don’t worry, the lines at the sides let you make it smaller. Shrink the box down to where you want it (overlying the heart image in this case) and then you are ready to add an image.
How to get your cards printed
You can personalise the templates in so many ways from changing background colours and images to add photos, messages and even graphics you own yourself.
But what about getting them printed? Canva offers a service for this too. In the top right corner, there’s an option that says ‘Print Cards’ that opens a new box. Here there are options for single or double-sided, paper finishes and how many copies. You can add envelopes too if you want.
Once you’ve finalised all this, make a payment and wait for the cards to arrive – simple!
Mix and match
The great thing about cards made with online tools like Canva is there are a few options. You can use some of the elements to print off and add to your own cards to send for Christmas. Or you can let them do the heavy lifting and print the whole thing. If you have a quality printer, you can also download the images and print them yourself.
This means a whole range of ways to get those personalised Christmas cards without having to make everything from scratch. By grabbing free elements such as fonts, you can also upgrade their basic templates to be even more your style!
Here’s three I made from the templates.
