A customized Christmas

When it comes to sending Christmas cards, I'm anything but consistent. Some years I send carefully customized, handmade cards. Those usually get sent out no sooner than 2 weeks too late and usually one person (Grandma) or maybe two comments on my handiwork.

Last year I decided the effort wasn't worth it. I've got a December birthday to deal with and my energy needed to go into making the invites for the big 1st celebration. Instead I just sent all my leftover holiday cards. You know, you buy the boxed sets and always have a few leftover. 10 years of that and you have a lot of random cards floating around. I'm sure some people got repeats, but I'm sure 99.9% of the people I send cards to are not the kind of people to hang onto their cards for years and realize my faux pas.

As soon as Parent Bloggers offered me a chance to review a new line of holiday cards, I jumped. Sure it was October and I would have to get my act together earlier than planned, but it was worth it.

Minted offers a wide variety of cards, from the basic flat photo card to a year long timeline, complete with pictures. My initial thought was to go with the timeline, but then I was under a time crunch and picking just four pictures and events seemed impossible. In the last year Marielle has gone from not talking or walking to being a full on person. I also had the option of having a card with a printed letter inside. But what if she had some huge accomplishment between October and December? Then what!? In the end, I decided those who cared enough to know the minutiae of our lives were probably already reading about it on our blogs, and this was supposed to make me less stressed, not more!

Sample of a yearline layout

Instead I decided to go with a notecard format. The design is on the front, with room for me to write a personalized note inside. Perhaps I could even use them as after-Christmas thank you notes.

I like to see all my options when shopping online. If you search for "all and show all your color options, you have 197 holiday cards to choose from. The cards range from a classic Victorian look to contemporary designs. Best of all, they come in fun unique colors in addition to the traditional red or green. (Minted also does wedding and birth announcements. Since I will hopefully never need either again, I hope they branch out into party invites before long!)

Once you select your card you have multiple customization options. Don't like the word "JOY"? Change it to something else. Make a "Merry Christmas" into a "Feliz Navidad." You can even take the Christ right out of Christmas and make it a Hanukkah card! Usually card manufacturers offer one or two token cards for Kwanzaa or Hanukkah. It's nice to have so many options if I decide I want to send a Festivus card this year. (Which of course I wouldn't do since it goes against everything Festivus stands for!)

All cards can be customized by the designer working on your card; you just leave comments as you specify your colors, text, etc. My only complaint is that though I was offered a never ending selection of fonts, I had absolutely no idea what 98% of them look like. A cheat sheet or even a link to an external site would have been helpful.

The amount of customization is amazing. You can send in a photo and say "Crop around the face and change the image to black and white" and they do exactly what you ask. The options are endless - everything from matching return address labels to custom calligraphy.

Once I submitted my photo and my specs, I received an email back from a designer within a day or two. She mentioned that I might want to send a higher resolution photo, and provided two proofs to see different layout options. We immediately took some new photos and I'm glad we did; they look much better now. I sent the photos back, requested a few minor changes, and again got 2 proofs to review.

About 10 days later our cards arrived. I was so pleased to see the box, so nicely packaged, and the image looking fantastic. Then...I realized they were wrong. We had asked for the folded cards and had received flat. I checked my order and I had indeed ordered the folded cards. I mentioned it to them in case there was some sort of programming error with their website. I could have lived with the flat, but they not only reprinted them but sent them 2-day shipping. Everybody makes mistakes, but it is rare you find a company that is so responsive, with such great customer service.

I think the pricing is fantastic. The ones I ordered are normally $206 for 100. You can order quantities as low as 25 (prices start at around $60 for 25). Most of us that send cards have at least 25 people we haven't blackballed from our list. When I think about how much time I used to spend making my own cards, it is totally worth every cent. Why make Christmas even more complicated?

No, you can't see our card yet, but here are some other ones from Minted.