How to create a successful e Christmas card

From the first time I saw a friend's Jib Jab e Christmas card three year's ago, I was hooked.  Now people have been asking me if we are doing one this year, and it's neatly slipped into the space previously filled by conventional Christmas cards.

This year I might have had to recast a few times to avoid gender stereotypes.  Click to skip the ad. I chose the free card because it was my favourite, hence the ad, but I think the premium, pay for cards are ad free.




My top tips to get a good e card, choose pictures with:
- each participant looking directly at the camera, although side on can be fun, as long as you are looking at the camera.
- classic rule of stage performance, go for big facial expressions, you will look much less silly if you are really 'going for it', than you will with a half smile or no expression.
- cheesy grins - c'mon it's Christmas - but with teeth together rather than parted.
- hair off the face

I'd estimate this year it took me an hour to find the pics, use the tool to edit the faces and experiment with different types of card.  Once I had the faces sorted my kids loved experimenting with the scenarios, but older children could easily select and crop the pictures themselves.

Once you have the faces they are stored in your account so you can easily create cards throughout the year.  Updating the faces each year is a bit of a tradition for us, a new take on the family Christmas photo.

Mr G and I did another one where we had a snowball fight with Grandad, and we might do few more individual ones as it's fun playing.  There's some good ones for groups of friends or colleagues too, and as you can take pics from facebook so I might do some for friends too.  Here's our 70s disco frenzy from last year.

You can then email or facebook your card, or download it for a couple of dollars through paypal so you have a copy as a memento. Or upload the downloaded file from your computer to You Tube so you can easily share it, or embed the code in a blog post.