Holiday cards are hard

It is with a little bit of shame that I admit my sanity and intelligence were tested last night by online photocard printing software. It all started out as another one of my innocent projects: get a picture taken, uploaded and printed for holiday postcards to send to family and friends. It sounded easy and plenty of people much busier than me have managed it for years - so I should be able to hammer it out in no time. Before you say anything, I realize that I am getting a late start on the whole idea - ideally these cards should have been shipped off and sitting in a mail pile or taped up in some crazy holiday card montage by now - but better late that never (that is today's motto).

First, for the picture. A picture of Daniel and I would be boring and weird. A picture of our cats, on the other hand, would be weird in a cute way (right?). After one round of trying 'posed' cat pictures and one round of laying on the ground next to our Christmas tree for 30 minutes trying to capture a magical moment, I gave up. I had an impromptu picture of Penfold (our older cat) sitting in a box from Christmas last year and decided slapping 'Happy Holidays!' on the card would suffice. Up to this point, although the photo sessions were a total bust, the project is still coming along nicely...well, maybe the cats hate it up to this point.


Rejected #1: Chihiro wrestles ribbon. Cute, but not what I was looking for.


Rejected #2: Chihiro bats the ornament while Penfold looks on. Maybe if Penfold was giving his typical look of pure boredom at the camera and the angle was better (i.e. cords and the bottom of the radiator weren't key components of the shot).

Now to create and order the card. I honestly thought this would be the easy part, but it turns out this is where whatever ideal specifications I had did not exist in the online printing world and I slowly start conceding them all. I simply wanted a postcard that had the one picture filling the front and a basic font that read 'Happy Holidays.' It turns out cartoony little reindeer, strung lights or dancing presents are much easier to put on a card than the words 'Happy Holidays.' A rundown of online vendors in case someone else is still getting their holiday card together (you will notice I go from 'I' to 'we' at this point because I had a temper tantrum early in the online process and Daniel stepped in to mediate...and probably save the computer from being drop kicked):

• mpix.com: The card and postcards can be customized to your liking by downloading software to your computer and then uploading the finished product. A few issues with this: 1) the download was huge (286 Mb), which took 20 minutes to download and 2) 3 minutes after that we realized it was a complete waste of time and accomplished what other sites could handle in an online version. This was the first time mpix let me down.
  
• kodakgallery.com: No postcards were available (that we could find). The pre-made border designs were okay, but too traditional for our taste. Also, in most options the picture was a small insert in a big border design, so it kind of got lost in the whole design. A picture of a family with these designs is probably okay, but a picture of a cat in a box, I think this approach would have evoked more of a 'WTH?' reaction.
  
• vistaprint.com: My sister used it for her save-the-date cards, so I figured we could find something that would work for the holidays. This site, however, definitely caters to the business world and although we had fun with our picture next to sayings like 'One day only!' and 'Everything on sale', it just didn't seem right. At this point, I was still holding out for our picture with online font overlay, because I thought it would print better.


• snapfish.com: This site started as a total bust. We selected postcards and found a red border that went along the bottom of the postcard and had big lettering. The sample lettering said 'Las Vegas' and we were just going to change that to 'Happy Holidays'. As it turns out, the wording couldn't be changed. Seriously, do that many people go to Vegas, come home and upload their prints to snapfish and then send postcards to friends?!? Defeated, we switched over to photocards that came in envelopes and found a simple design that had a small, red band over the main picture that read 'Merry Christmas'. Close enough.

A few of the card designs that didn't make the cut...

So the online part wasn't as smooth and catering to my particular(ly odd) needs as I thought it would be, but I will continue to patronize these vendors for my other photo printing needs. Most importantly, I still look forward to sending well-wishes to family/friends and just need to remember to take a deep breath and tap into the holiday spirit a bit more.

[Update . 12/13/09 : Okay, time out on the holiday spirit bit for just one moment (read: I am going to complain for this entire paragraph, so read no further if you aren't in the mood.) We got the 'photocards' in the mail the other day...and they are nothing more than 5x7 photos, complete with Kodak paper water markings and a date/time/facility stamp running across the back. The only thing that made them even remotely like a card was the flimsy little envelope, which is see-through (but not in a cool glassine envelope kind of way) and has a snapfish logo printed on it. So one paper cutter, several large mailing labels and 2 hours later I have photocards on which I can actually pen a little note. Just an update that I do not recommend snapfish for your holiday or photocard needs. Humpfh!]