Thanks to Melody for sharing her post on Workplace (and now with eQuipping for eMinistry readers).

Don’t have a card ready yet? You can do most of her ideas starting today and have a card in the mail for Christmas or for New Year’s Eve. These greeting cards show your appreciation and serve as reminders for prayer (or for a year-end gift).

Time-saving Christmas Card Ideas

Time sometimes has a value higher than money. Consider using these affordable services for convenience.

Your Card

I just created this Christmas card on Canva.com in less than 10 minutes. You can, too. Sign up for your free Canva account and then edit my template with your photos.

Next, I uploaded the card to the Walmart photo center for printing and picked them up in one hour. It cost me $32.10 for 250 prints.

I had previously ordered two packs of 100 4×6 self-seal envelopes for $13.99 each and one nicer pack of dark navy blue to match our outfits (for special family members and our top donors) at $14.95 for 50.

I wrote short sentence updates on each of our lives and then printed that out on red paper at my church. I cut this into 4ths or 6ths, depending, and enclosed the updates with our photo card. I loved sending a nice family photo and an update on our lives.

Extra Touches

I bought a roll of pretty foil seals that say Joy, adding a nice touch to our envelopes. (This is my second year using them since they come in a roll of 500 for $12.99.)

Another option I considered was to stick a magnet to the back of the card for my friends to add our photo to their fridge collection.

The “Price” of Convenience

It was approximately $0.30 total for each picture card. This doesn’t include stamps or return address labels. Printing the inserts was free since our church lets us use their copier as part of their gift to our ministry.

I print return address labels with a Christmas symbol on my printer.

I also ordered the Peanuts© stamps that I learned about on eQuipping for eMinistry. I paid a small shipping fee and they arrived at my home in about a week. (Order Christmas stamps at USPS.com.) This saved me a trip and was easy to attach a receipt when I cleared my Concur.

The time I gained enables me to be very generous to our neighbors and many others at church.

How do you do your Christmas cards?

Guest Post by Melody Hatcher

If Melody could only do one thing the rest of her life, it would be to love others. She has the best job in the world doing just that: Loving the neighbors around her in the spheres of influence God has strategically prepared in advance for her. She loves the multi-cultural neighborhood where she lives and serves as a neighboring specialist with Neighborhood Bible Studies 2GO.

She loves Thai food date nights with her best friend Ben, walking her Springer Spaniel Bingley, and schooling her favorite 3rd grader Stephen.

She has great joy creating helpful solutions for others to be more effective at furthering the kingdom of God.

Her life verse:

“When I am with those who are weak, I share their weakness, for I want to bring the weak to Christ. Yes, I try to find common ground with everyone, doing everything I can to save some. I do everything to spread the Good News and share in its blessings.” 1 Corinthians 9:22-23

NOTES from Sus:

• We’ve revived a Christmas card tradition. Our grandkids are now doing artwork for our card. When our kids were little, our ministry partners always looked forward to our cards. I’m sharing my card template on Cru’s Google Drive. I printed in Word (flip on long edge) on card stock. I cut the card in half and folded it to fit in invitation-size envelopes (4 3/8″ x 5 3/4″).
• If you need free photo-editing software, download
  • GIMP or
  • Paint.net
• The envelopes Melody ordered on Amazon can be delivered same day if you place a $35+ Prime order. Or run over to your local office supply store.
• Other photo card options are:
  • Walgreens 60% off code SEND-JOY for photo cards, through Dec 31.
  • 4×6 photo prints at Sam’s Club for $0.05 per print are half off for a few more days.
• See more ideas from fellow Cru staff on the original post on Workplace. Add your ideas, too.
• Christmas gifts photo by Mel Poole on Unsplash