The festive season is fast approaching so it’s time to get organised. That means making sure you’re up to date with all your projects and client work, keeping your schedule filled with a steady stream of new work and making sure you don’t forget things like admin and marketing. And don’t forget the Christmas shopping either!
One thing many businesses like to do around this time of year is show their appreciation to their clients and customers. That could be lavish gifts, nice meals or parties, but more likely means sending them a Christmas card. It’s a small yet lovely way to show them you care.
You could pop in to the nearest supermarket and pick up a big box of cards, but if you’d rather send out something more personal and tailored to your brand why not create your own. It’s a great way to make a great impression and spread some festive cheer.
Today I’ve got 3 ways you can create your own Christmas cards even when you’re short on time.
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1. Get crafty
If you’re a hands-on kind of person and have a fairly small list, you could try linocut printing. A hand-printed card with your own design on it is sure to bring a smile to your customers’ faces – and probably impress the heck out of them too 🙂
Keep the design really simple though as complicated designs take ages to cut in lino (trust me, my last print was super-detailed with 5 different colours and took well over a week to cut, while I’ve done simpler ones in a couple of hours).
Try sticking to just one colour, or if you want more, maybe you could add the second by hand later as a quick dab with a paintbrush will be faster than cutting two bits of lino. I’ve got a step by step tutorial you can follow if you fancy giving it a go.
Check out: How to design and print a linocut Christmas card
2. Get techy
If ecards are more your thing, there are a couple of options. If you use an email newsletter service like Mailchimp and have permission to email your customers, you can easily create a personalised ecard. Mailchimp has a bunch of themed templates you can adapt, so you could tweak the colours, add your logo and a nice message and you’re sorted.
Or you could use one of the blank templates and add your own seasonal imagery. Try getting a festive stock photo – istock, Dreamstime and PhotoDune are good places to buy pics, along with Unsplash and Fancy Crave that have rather nice free ones – then just overlay your logo and a greeting using an app like Canva. You could also save your design ready for sharing on your social media accounts.
Check out: How to use Canva to create awesome graphics for a tutorial
3. Cheat!
If you want to send out a physical card, but don’t fancy taking up a new hobby (once you start linocutting, you may well find yourself addicted!) then you could cheat.
Many companies offer a range of Christmas card designs you can use. You simply choose your design, upload your logo to go on the back of the card and add a nice message inside the card. Then you get some rather lovely printed cards to post to your customers.
Through my other business, Fox + Finch, I’ve even got some designs you can use. You can now customise any of my Christmas card designs and send them to your customers. There are over 10 exclusive designs to choose from – perfect if you want something different from the typical business Christmas cards that get out every year.
Check out the designs and get all the details here.
If you decide to get crafty – or techy – I’d love to see the results. Take a pic and post it on my Facebook page to show off your awesome cards.
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