Take Advantage of Free Photo Editing Ops

Now is a good time to think about ways to use your photos for the coming Christmas season. Why? Because for the time being, PicMonkey.com allows you to use all their editing tools for free, no registration required!

[Update: It was bound to happen. Sometime before the Christmas season 2012, PicMonkey began charging a monthly fee to use some their "Royale" features. Non-royale features are still free, though.]

Possible uses for your photos include turning them into Christmas cards or postcards, including a print inside store-bought or handmade cards, inserting one or more into a computer-created Christmas newsletter, creating gifts tags, or even turning them into ornaments to hang from a tree or garland! 

Your photos don’t have to be perfect for these projects as long as they are in focus rather than blurry. Too dark or too light can be adjusted. Dull can be brightened. Red eyes can be corrected. Cropping can remove things that detract from the picture. There are many, many tools and effects to make an ordinary photo extraordinary!

If you want to add text to your photo, look for one that has a fairly solid dark or light space. Photos that demonstrate “the rule of thirds” are great for this. In the example, my daughter’s composition features me in the left third of the frame, leave two thirds for my message.



This next example features a Christmas scene without people, an option if you didn’t get any family photos that you feel like using, or you have a collection of Christmas items that you love and want to share with family and friends! As you can see, this one also featured a dark space that was perfect for text.


Don’t forget to add the photographer’s name and date in one of the lower corners of the photo!

This photo has no text but would make a pretty card. I had fun taking this indoor shot and playing with two special effects available: frosted edges and snow. This means you could take a family photo this summer and “winterize” it with frosted or snowflake edges and even a snowy overlay. 

While you’re at it, you might consider some photo gift ideas while this free photo editing is available. It’s not too early to start stocking your gift closet! Any photo center offers mugs, calendars, keychains, t-shirts, throws, and more, all personalized with your photos. Or, budget-minded folks may choose to enlarge and frame their special prints, like my daughter did when she made this one and added a Bible verse. It was a big hit!

There are so many fun and fancy options for making your photos pop! While they are free, check it out! And, if you know of other free photo editing sites online, please leave a comment and let us know. 

Christmas (Newsletter) in July

Christmas in July? You bet!

Here in the Sunny South, I enjoyed a day in July (the15th, to be exact) when the temperature OUTSIDE never made it out of the 60s! What a delightfully chilly departure from those high 90s where just taking a breath was enough to make one break into a sweat! The next day started out chilly as well before the mercury inched its way up to 79. It was like a memory of early spring and an advance taste of late fall, all rolled into one day! As I shivered and slid into a jacket, I thought, “It’s a perfect Christmas in July day!”

Now we’re back to the normal sweltering days of summer, but at least we can escape indoors and set our minds on Christmas! Turn on the A/C, sip something cold and refreshing, and dig out a Christmas CD for the appropriate holiday mood. :) (Right now I’m listening to Santa Baby. It always makes me grin. Marilyn Monroe didn’t sing it, but it would have fit  her sultry style.)

A few weeks ago, a blog friend announced that she had begun working on her Christmas newsletter. Way to go, Linda! This is where I generally fall short. Like most who write them, I wait until the end of the year to put my newsletter together, and then I have trouble recalling the highlights of the year. Plus, I get busy and distracted, and before I know it, my cards are going out late because it took me a while to get my newsletter “wrapped up.”

Take a break from the heat and think about your own newsletter. What have been the highlights and low points of the first half of the year? Devote one to three sentences to each idea. If you are one of those who like themes, brainstorm for something fresh for this year. Store your notes for later. When you are ready to finish your letter and make copies, you'll be glad that you got half the job done early this time.

TIP #1: Restrain from typing joyously in all caps and using multiple exclamation points, especially when bragging about the talented so-and-so’s who are your children. A simple “So-and-so continues to earn high marks in school” gets the same message across as “WE ARE SO PROUD OF OUR LITTLE ANGEL’S STRAIGHT A’s AND ALL THE TALENT THAT DRIPS FROM EACH FINGER AND TOE!!!! WE’RE SO VERY BLESSED!!!! GOD OBVIOUSLY LOVES US MORE THAN YOU AND YOUR LITTLE DISASTERS!!!!” without taking up as much space or being quite so obnoxious.

TIP #2: Don’t shy away from being real. We all have our struggles. Honesty goes a long way in strengthening bonds. Briefly share a disappointment, knowing that your recipients will likely be able to relate.

TIP #3: Include a few photos. Make sure that YOU are in at least one photo. You say you feel self-conscious about how you have aged? Well, make it a small picture! Anything is better than photos of just the kids or the pets. We can assume that the recipients of your newsletter are people who love you and see your inner beauty shining through. You may not see it, but we do. I promise!

ALTERNATIVE IDEA:  You say you aren’t a writer? Holiday newsletters make you shudder? Okay, fine. Don’t start a newsletter. But you aren’t off the hook this month. Instead, you can focus on a photo to include in your Christmas cards, or maybe a photo that you will use AS a Christmas card! Consider dressing up in Christmas hats or sweatshirts or just Christmas colors. Consider creating a backdrop by hanging a solid piece of fabric up or digging out the garland and quickly decorating something with it. If you have a Christmas tablecloth, it might make an interesting backdrop. It won’t take a lot of time to make the effort. Honest! Get a friend or a timer to snap a family shot for you so that you will be in the picture. Put on a Christmas CD. You'll be doing more than creating a holiday photo; you’ll be making a memory. :)

#7 - June: Planning the Christmas Newsletter

How do you feel about Christmas newsletters? It probably depends on your experience of receiving and reading them. I enjoy them. I love it when my loved ones share their lives with me! I learned how to write my own by reading Uncle Jimmie and Aunt Susan’s newsletters. Their newsletters are nearly always just one page in length. Each includes a few photos. Each shares a few brief milestones and accomplishments of each member of the family. Each is organized in a newspaper format with a headline that hints at the theme. Each sticks to the theme. Each is fun to read!

Contrast that kind of newsletter with the one you hate to read: that’s the overly long one written in a hard-too-read font filled with exclamation-point-bragging about the writer’s perfect life and over-the-top beautiful, creative, talented, genius children. I really think it’s that kind of newsletter that makes so many people disparage Christmas newsletters.

To create a Christmas newsletter that folks can’t wait to receive, follow these pointers:

• Keep track of your milestones. We can lead such busy lives that looking back is a blur! If you’ve marked a calendar or kept notes in a notebook, you can look back and be reminded of events that others would enjoy reading about.

• Keep it short. Try your best to keep it to one page. It’s common knowledge in the business world that people look at multiple pages and set them aside to read later when they have more time. Sometimes, later never comes. It’s better to keep your readers’ attention with brief milestones and memorable events than lose them with long explanations of every activity and award that made up your year.

• Keep it real. Your life isn’t perfect. Feel free to share the lows along with the highs. Additionally, you are the one writing the newsletter, not your pets, not your new baby, not some nameless reporter. The cutesy stuff has already been done. Keep things real by writing as yourself. And remember that most of your friends are more interested in you than in your kids. Make sure you don’t leave your own news out of the newsletter.

• Make ’em laugh. Keep track of the funny quotes by your kids or even your significant other: write them in your daily planner or wall calendar, or on a 3 x 5 card that you save with your Christmas card supply. Then when you get ready to write your newsletter, you can go through the quotes and choose one or two to highlight. Looking back through my old newsletters, I found that I included two in my 2000 newsletter. 1) When my 8-year-old daughter was asked what she wants to be when she grows up, she answered, “A lady!” 2) After watching me butter the turkey and search inside for the giblets, my son asked, “What’s turkey made out of? Chicken?”

• Avoid preaching. A Christmas newsletter should be casual and friendly, not self-righteous and preachy. Please understand that I'm not talking about sharing a few thoughts about the meaning of Christmas or a spiritual lesson you learned. That sort of thing is fine and expected. Just remember that the bulk of a newsletter should news about you and your family. That's what inquiring minds want to know!

• Choose an interesting format. Many programs have newsletter templates that you can use, or you can be extra creative and design your own. (If you go with a simple letter format, please break it down into paragraphs. It's daunting to be faced with a Christmas letter that is an entire page long with no breaks!) Choose a font that won’t make readers reach for reading glasses. You may also use special, holiday-themed newsletter paper, or you may use plain white paper and dress it up with your color photos or graphics.

• Consider your options. Maybe writing isn’t your thing. A picture is worth a thousand words! Instead of writing a newsletter, you might enjoy creating a collage of photos that tell the story of your year. A few captions, and your project will be complete. Your relatives will love it!

There’s a fringe benefit to writing yearly Christmas newsletters that you may not know about. Your newsletters will act much like a diary but in a more succinct fashion. I’ve saved a copy of almost all of mine since 1987! Re-reading them is like a walk down memory lane. If you have never written one before, I encourage you to give it a shot this year. When you can plan for it, you can make it happen!

My apologies for a late-month blog. If all goes as planned, I'll have the next blog posted on the first Sunday of the month. Coming in July: Ideas for emphasizing Christ during Christmastime