1) Find out where to get free vintage cards online (see the links to the right), or
2) Learn how to use free, online software that converts your personal photos into e-cards. and
3) Examine a list of free photocard sharing sites to find the best way to send and share your e-cards.
That's what this blog is all about: pointing you to some easy and fun websites that providing simple instructions for photo card creation. Once you've learned how to make them, sending photo cards is as quick and simple as sending an e-mail or text.
Your friends will appreciate personalized photo e-cards just as much as paper cards, for several reasons:
- The vintage (pre-1925) greeting cards and postcards are genuinely funny, beautiful, and well-made: For the older generation (parents and grandparents) they have genuine nostalgic value, and for the younger generation they are fun to view.
- Because vintage cards cost much less (they're free!), and because one can collect, upload and send vintage e-cards often, they encourage the thoughtfulness of polite card-sending
- Converting self-made photos (selfies) to e-cards adds a home-made touch that is far more enjoyable than the canned sentiment one finds in a store-bought card. It shows some real thoughtfulness and says "I care."
WHERE TO FIND PUBLIC DOMAIN IMAGES FOR YOUR CARDS
First of all, any photo you make with your own camera is definitely yours by right, so that is definitely the best place to start when making e-cards. Copyright worries? Zilch! Selfies are best. But there are also about a gazillion free public domain images out there on the internet. See some of the links to the right under the heading "Where to Find Images." The internet is the biggest free card shop in the world!
Secondly, once you have the photo, you don't have to spend a penny on fancy apps or Photoshop to buy the basic tools you need to make an e-card. Almost every Microsoft-made computer out there has the basic tools built in: Microsoft Picture Manager and/or an application called Paint, which allows one to add text onto any image.
For any photo on your computer desktop, just right-click the photo, read the menu balloon that opens, go down to the choice that says "Open With" and select Microsoft Picture Manager. Follow the Help instructions for using this application to crop, adjust and resize the picture. When done, save the newly spiffed-up image. Then open the picture a second time with the accessory called Paint in order to add text. The drill is exactly the same: right click the photo, go to "Open With" and select Paint. Follow the Help instructions to learn how to add colors and text.
If that seems like too much trouble, or your time is limited, then leave it to the pros: the greeting card makers of yesteryear. Basically, any card made before the year 1926 is probably in the public domain, and therefore free to use.
To help people find public domain images, I've built a simple links blog much like this one. Please explore the "imagefetch.blogspot.com" link provided here. The imagefetch blog provides links to
- about 1,000,000 vintage (pre-1925) greeting cards and post cards
- classic paintings and works of fine art available for free at dozens of museum websites
- government posters or photos already paid for with tax dollars (including photos from NASA)
- beautiful and fascinating book illustrations from pre-1900 books (thousands may be downloaded for free at Project Gutenberg, www.gutenberg.org)
- historic illustrations, maps and posters offered free-of-charge by library digital collections, and finally, last but not least,
- a vast array of special collections, such as Civil War photos, presidential portraits, paintings of birds and flowers, still photos of 1890s theatre stars, color photos of World War I, pictures of race cars and biplanes, collections of propaganda posters and silent movie posters, fashion plates from the 1920s, vintage baseball cards, and thousands upon thousands of 3-D stereographs made in the 19th century (the New York Public Library's Digital Collection alone offers a copyright-free collection of more than 40,000 stereoscopes, with 3-D views from every state in the United States).
For those who hate browsing and wading through so many links, who want a one-stop shop where one can just get in, get out, and go, there is a wonderful alternative to making e-cards by oneself: Yestercards.com.
Yestercards.com
This is a website that has already collected thousands of vintage greeting cards, placed them into simple holiday categories, and provided an easy-to-use e-card tool that allows one to choose a card image, add a personal message and send the receiver a link.
When the person receiving the e-card clicks on the link, it takes them to a page where they may view the vintage card image you chose and the personal message you added. Done!
I have no financial connection or affiliation with Yestercards whatsoever: I am a fanatic for all things vintage, and consequently I love this website! It's the best thing since greeting cards and e-cards were first invented. There is little or no advertising spam, and it is absolutely free. So I am giving Yestercards.com a big shout out. They've done an amazing job re-cycling some beautiful old cards for the enjoyment of a new generation.
Only downside: If you want to send free e-cards to your friends through them, then you have to share the email addresses of your friends with the folks at Yestercards. To my knowledge, Yestercards does not use the e-mail information sent through their servers to advertise, as larger outfits like Hallmark cards will do. They are user friendly, and I have never had a single complaint about them.
Still, people who cherish their privacy may need to be reminded: Websites like Yestercards are not completely free. You have to share an email address to use Yestercards.
For those who want to make and design their own e-cards, or send them without a middleman getting in the way, it's time to learn the very simple process of converting one's own photos into e-cards. It won't take long. There are several easy ways to turn photos into e-cards, and they are all drop-dead simple.
1. Go to a commercial e-card website that offers to convert your photos to e-cards for free.
If you are okay with sharing e-mail addresses, then there are several websites that will send your photos as e-cards for free. Simply go to the following links:
1-2-3 Greetings.com
Regards.com/gc.cfm/
The Nature Conservancy e-Card Page
The World Wildlife Fund e-Card Page, and yes, even
Hallmark Cards.
In fact, if you don't mind signing up with Hallmark and sharing private information, they provide an interesting service. They will help you synch up to your calendar and Facebook birthday lists, so that e-cards made in-house are sent out automatically, on time: a nice option for environmentally conscious business people and admin assistants who are working a large list of clients.
For those who don't like the advertising spam and the commercial feel of these websites, there are certainly other options, namely:
2. Buy $1 apps that make e-cards on your cell phone, tablet or laptop, then send the image as a text or
3. Send the card by email, cloud, Facebook or Pinterest
Yup, "there's an app for that!"
In fact there are now several free-to-$2 apps that help you make e-cards on your cell phone or tablet and send them as a text. There are so many photo-editing-and-texting apps, in fact, that I won't dictate names, because they are well known and the process is as simple as Googling "photo app" or "e-card software" or going to any app store that works with your device and plunking down a few dollars for the app that strikes your fancy. It's very simple and self-explanatory.
To be fair, and not promote any particular commercial software, I would say try the website: AlternativeTo.net for crowd-sourced app reviews and recommendations. See the 152 alternatives to "Instagram," a popular photo-sharing app, at this link: http://alternativeto.net/software/instagram/ See the Top 10 alternatives to any "ecard maker" at this link: http://alternativeto.net/browse/search?q=ecard+maker.
E-CARD DELIVERY
What is not terribly obvious is the fact that, when it comes to sharing homemade e-cards, one has some free alternatives that are actually superior to store-bought e-card software and photo applications. For example, if an e-card is actually just an emailed link that takes the receiver to an image, then why not cloudshare?
This can be done simply with Google Drive or by signing up for a free email account at MSN.com, and using their OneDrive storage for relatively private image-sharing. Once a single e-card has been parked in a folder on OneDrive, it can be emailed as an individual image link to anyone on your contacts list. A message that simply says "Happy Birthday! I've made an e-card for you" and adds the link is fine. The receiver will appreciate not being bombarded with heavy photo files. All they need to do is open their email and follows the link, which gives direct access to the e-card image you parked on OneDrive -- which is all that any e-card "service" is doing.
The big difference is: you have not published the e-card and its message for others to see and you've shared birthdates and email adresses with no one outside your circle of friends. This procedure is also superior to texting, because it does not eat up a cellphone's peanut-sized memory. Sending a link shows some consideration, and it allows you to share large-honking high-definition cards that otherwise could not be emailed or texted in under a half hour.
Of course, if you are very comfortable living in public and couldn't give a hoot about privacy, you can also cloudshare any image you have created on your phone or tablet via email, Pinterest, Flickr or Facebook. Upload a home-made image to Pinterest, and you now get a little "paper airplane" icon in the corner that lets you send the image as a link emailed to friends.
Likewise, if you would like to share your e-card designs with the entire world, in one simple public post, then photoblog it. That is, upload it to Blogspot and send people the link, or upload to Flickr, tag it as an ecard, and send people the link. Posting on Flickr is, in fact, a very popular way for artists to share their original, home-made e-cards with the entire world. Just search on Flickr for the term "e-card" and you will get an eyeful!
Want to keep it personal, and person-to-person, but have a problem remembering birthdays and anniversaries? In fact, one can replicate what Hallmark is offering (e-cards sent automatically on the right date) by simply learning to use the calendar reminder tools provided by Outlook and almost any e-mail service. See for example the "Google + notification guidelines," which tell you how to make that little bell-thingy on a Gmail account start ringing you, and giving you text notifications on your cellphone when someone's birthday is approaching.
The very nicest thing about e-cards is this: If you spaced getting a paper card into the snail mail on time, a home-made e-card will get there at the speed of e-mail. As long as you have set your calendar to ring you when someone's big day has arrived, you can have a card made in half an hour, or a fun Yestercard sent in through 1-2-3 Greetings photocard application in less than 10 minutes.
For birthdays, here's an idea you may not have considered that almost always works: A WikiTree e-card.
WIKITREE E-CARDS
WikiTree is a free and public genealogy website at www.wikitree.com. It is also an excellent place to find public domain photos and create e-cards.
Why? Because any photo published on WikiTree automatically becomes an e-card. They add an e-card button beneath every photo on their site, and their site contains profiles for almost 16 billion people.
That's right: 16 billion files. Think about it.
Who likes e-cards illustrated with celebrity images? Everyone! Where can you find copyright-free photos of favorite presidents, sports heros, Civil War generals, movie stars, rock stars and historical figures of any kind? Wikipedia. Every photo published on Wikipedia is from WikiMedia Commons and has already been vetted as public domain.
But how can you convert the Wikipedia photo (a WikiCommons photo) into an e-card? You don't have to! That's where WikiTree comes in. Go to the WikiTree Search engine, search on the name, and a public domain publicity photo is probably already parked on the celebrity's genealogy profile and ready to send as an e-card.
If not, then creating a WikiTree e-card is simple. Go to the Wikipedia profile, download the public domain image, copy the first paragraph of the Wikipedia article as text. Then go to WikiTree, sign up for a free account, and use the WikiTree search engine to find the family tree page for the celebrity. If there is no biography, paste the paragraph of text you've just copied from the Wikipedia article, then upload the public domain photo you got from Wikipedia into the WikiTree image section.
Bing! You have just created an e-card. That photo will sit online (always available) and it can now be used whenever you want to send it as an e-card. The icing on the cake: you've also done a public service by creating a WikiTree profile for one of your favorite celebrities.
In fact, one may find millions (literally millions) of fascinating old photos already posted on WikiTree for favorite celebrities who already have their biographies written. If that is true, then you don't even need to create a WikiTree account and you don't need to sign in. Anyone and their dog can use the Wikitree search engine or send an e-card.
To send that celebrity's photo as an e-card, just
1) Search on the celebrity name you want using the Wiki Tree search engine here.
2) Click on the correct name amongst the results (it helps if you know the celebrity's birthday!)
3) After the profile loads, click on the small thumbnail photo and wait for the image page to load. At the bottom right of the image there will be a button that says "Send As E-Card." Click the button.
4) It's going to create a make-believe postcard, so you will be asked to choose a fake postage stamp. Be sure to click the radio button, and not the stamp itself or you will be carried to a page about stamps.
5) Provide your name and email address in the appropriate boxes. Add the recipient's email address.
6) They provide a message section, so yes, you can personalize the e-card with a message!
7) Hit the Review button to see how the final card will look when it is received. If no corrections, then
8) Hit the send button. Done!
In other words, you can send many, many celebrity e-cards for free using WikiTree, and if you can think of a celebrity who is strongly associated with a popular holiday (Boris Karloff for Halloween? Donald Trump for Thanksgiving? Burl Ives for Christmas?) you may also have a source for fast, free and fun holiday cards.
As for birthday cards, who wasn't born on the same day as a celebrity? Just Google the birthday plus Wikipedia. Surprisingly, Wikipedia has an article about every single day of the year, which allows you to read about what happened on that day. At the bottom of the Wikipedia article will be a list of celebrities born on the same day as your friend. Pick a celebrity who is dead and gone but still famous. You can then use the WikiTree method described above to send your friend a fun and appropriate E-card for their birthday, complete with photo of a famous celebrity born on their birthday.
SUMMARY
To conclude, the basic step-process for sharing e-cards is this:
1. Take the picture and upload it, or download the public domain image you want
2. Enhance the image with photo apps (a simple touch-up only requires Microsoft Photo Manager or Paint)
3. Send via free e-card apps like 1-2-3 Greetings or (if you don't want to share your email)
4. Get a free MSN Outlook account, and cloudshare using OneDrive
5. Get a free Pinterest account, publish your e-card there, and paper-airplane it to friends
6. Sign up for Flickr, and share the love with the entire world as an e-card for everyone, or,
7. Check out WikiTree's free search engine, and give their free e-card service a spin. With more than 16 billion records, they probably offer a copyright-free celebrity image that works!
E-mailing or texting an image from your phone is also an option, of course, but please remember that you are bombarding limited memory space with heavy photo files, which can irritate people. Simply texting an image does not have the slightly-more-formal feel of an e-card. That's why e-card services still exist and remain popular: They thoughtfully observe e-etiquette by sending a link in place of the image itself, and the image has been created with extra special care.
Again, for those who are just starting out, or those who have no patience whatever with Photoshop and photo apps, try scooting over to the fabulous pre-fabricated collections of vintage greeting cards at Yestercards.com. You will definitely find some wonderful and appropriate cards that can be sent quickly (and politely) as a simple email link.
Those who really love Photoshop, and want to put lots of time into the graphics would probably do best to cloudshare or to use the simple photocard creator at 1-2-3 Greetings. It has all the advantages of a genuine e-card service, one that does not bombard the recipient's in-box with heavy images.
That's it! Give each of these methods a spin, and see which works best for you. Collecting vintage cards is a fun hobby and definitely worth a few minutes of time. Learn to convert those vintage images to e-cards and you will never have to buy a $15 box of greeting cards again!
