Photo Ornament Ideas

Hi there! Have you gotten started organizing your photos yet?

Photo ornaments can be such fun gifts to receive, not to mention make! If you have a Hobby Lobby or other craft store in your area that posts coupons, now would be a good time to start collecting the supplies to make your photo ornament crafts. If you wait until the holiday season, you're less likely to find a coupon or to be able to use what you find -- not to mention finding the time to make the craft when the whole world is doing the holiday hustle-bustle! It just makes sense to work in advance.

I found the instructions for making a shaker ornament (with fake snow inside) here . The example uses a graphic of a snowman, but I think this would be awesome with family photos in place!

I love snow and snowmen and have a whole tree's worth of snow-themed ornaments. This pattern for a snowman photo ornament is something your children could make. If you're anything like me, you'll want to make some too. :)

This Christmas photo ball ornament involves cutting a photo into strips, which seems so wrong, but makes an awesome, lightweight ornament!

Excuse me while I go work some digital photo magic on my laptop. I've got some photos saved there that I want to use in my Christmas project!

April Album Antics

Happy Spring Fever, everyone!


Oh my, the pollen has left a fine, yellow-green coating on everything, including my dear daughter's allergic nasal passages. We want to be outside enjoying the sunshine, but perhaps a better idea is to stay indoors and work on Christmas ideas. 


This month, the burning question is this: where are those holiday pictures that you or your relatives took during your December festivities? If you don't have a collection of photographs placed in an album, scrapbook, or otherwise saved (online in a slideshow? Saved to a CD?), this is the month to tackle the task! 


Years ago a friend of mine lost five years' worth of digital family photos when her computer crashed. She had never gotten around to printing or saving them. The pictures are gone for good.  It's so easy to put off printing or otherwise saving your photos once you've uploaded them to your computer, but your computer isn't a good storage device for precious memories! You need a backup plan! Currently, I upload my photos both to a laptop and to a desktop computer. I then create albums online. I try but don't always succeed in printing my favorite photos several times a year. I think doing this monthly is ideal, but that's not something I've been able to do. I need to follow my own advice!


Having my mom here at Christmastime helps me be more diligent with my photos. When she spends Christmas with us, I always upload and edit my photos and make her a special photo album to take home. If I ever lost my photos to a flood, fire, or crash, I know I could call my mom and get those albums and make copies of those photos! Online I use Photobucket to upload photos and create slideshows. I also make albums in the photo section of Walmart.com when I use them to order prints. They save the albums as well. I'm sure there are many other online options; these are just the two I have the most experience with.


So tell us where your Christmas 2010 photos are right now! Still on a camera? On your hard drive? Sitting in an email sent by a friend or family member who took the photos? Or have you already taken steps to protect them or place them in albums?


Bonus April Photo Tip: Use those photos in fun Christmas crafts! Choose photos to use in photo ornaments or other Christmas craft projects. (I have some ornaments found in a consignment store that need photos added, and I have a banner with spaces for Christmas photos as well. You might make gift tags featuring photos of the recipients' faces -- then little children can help pass out the gifts by connecting the face on the tag to the face of the person in the room!