DIY Whimsical Family Portrait Christmas Card (& How You Can Make Yours)!

Learn how to make your own whimsical family portrait Christmas card to send to family and friends this holiday season! It’s simple, adorable, stress-free, & FUN!

DIY Whimsical Family Portrait Christmas Card

It’s finally the holiday season! Wahoo! I’m one of those people who has no problem skipping Thanksgiving after Halloween and going straight into Christmas mode.

Unfortunately, I’m married to a one-holiday-at-a-time guy.

So we compromise.

Come November 1st, the minivan’s radio gets programmed with Christmas stations (“Silver bells…..”), but the tree and all other Christmas decorations remain boxed in the garage until the day after Thanksgiving. That is my husband’s steadfast rule. Nothing else jolly until Black Friday.

Since I can’t get crazy decorating the house just yet thanks to Mr. Scrooge here, I decided to do the next best thing: make our Christmas cards!

These digital whimsical family portraits were SO EASY to design and this is probably the most unique card we’ve ever sent. I’m sure they’ll bring a smile to all of our family and friends’ faces this December.

And I must say that I am pretty darn proud of myself for having them finished so early this year. *pats self on the back*

You’re in luck too because….you can make one of these for your family in no time at all!

Other Christmas Cards

Here are a few other Christmas cards that we’ve sent out over the years.

As you can see, I like to have a little fun with them. Nothing serious or traditional for us.

What I Used for This Whimsical Family Portrait Christmas Card:

Adobe Photoshop CC (Adobe Illustrator will also work)
Personalised Portrait Creator
Font duo called Black & White
Home printer & ink
8.5 x 11″ glossy photo paper
Paper trimmer
5 x 7″ envelopes

Why Digital Holiday Cards Are the Way to Go

This was the easiest DIY Christmas card ever. For real. Wanna know why?

Here are just a few reasons I think I will forgo a real in the flesh holiday family photoshoot in the future:

No stressing about buying cute coordinating outfits
No stressing about getting the boys hair cuts in advance, or doing a halfway decent styling and makeup job for myself
No stressing about kiddos having fits or grumpy faces for the photographer
No stressing about the weather
No stressing about wait time for proofs to come in or if the photos turned out decent
No stressing about the price tag of a professional photoshoot

Did you pick up on the main theme here? NO STRESSING.

Yep, our cards were a breeze this year. I knocked out this whole design while my boys were napping one afternoon. Amazing, I know. Naptime for the win!

The Personalised Portrait Creator

So how did I create this super easy, adorable, and festive Christmas card in no time? I used a simple and straight-forward design bundle called the Personalised Portrait Creator….and it. is. AWESOME!

{And just so you know, I am not being paid for this post by the bundle’s creator. I just really love it!}

I’ve been eyeing this collection for a while and finally decided to give it a try when I saw that it includes some really great Christmas graphics along with the standard everyday goodies and fun wedding items.

Plus, since I’m a huge lover of all things personalized, I plan on creating many, many more creations of me and my family….so get ready, honey!

I envision a wedding portrait (even though our big day was almost ten years ago) and LOTS of fun self-portraits, because, let’s be honest here….this is the only way I will ever have perfect model hair and makeup and be 20 pounds lighter with no Mombie face or leggings-and-t-shirt standard SAHM uniform. Just keepin’ it real.

The best part is that this illustrated family portrait creator isn’t just for Christmas cards! You can literally make any kind of portrait for any occasion, or no occasion at all.

I’ve also made a non-holiday version of my little family that I absolutely LOVE (see the how-to here)!

It’s hanging on a mini-mudroom in our garage…

…is framed and a part of our hallway family command center…

…and I even included it on a semi-DIY personalized school excuse notepad for when my boys have to miss school.

It’s All About Layering

I’ll spare you from a complete step-by-step of the actual creation process because Lisa Glanz, the gal behind the Personalised Portrait Creator, already provides very thorough tutorials and videos that are way more detailed and helpful than I could ever create.

Basically, all you do is turn layers on and off in Photoshop (or Illustrator). That’s it. It’s SO easy.

{And sorry, but this collection won’t work in Photoshop Elements. Boo, I know.}

Tons of options are already included for everything you need to create fun personalized hand drawn versions of yourself or anyone in your life.

Body types, skin tones, ages, hair styles and colors, clothing and shoe options, as well as accessories, are all already there, just waiting to be seen.

You just have to make what you want visible, then tweak more of it if you’d like by changing the colors or patterns (which are also included).

As an example, if you want a long blonde hairdo like I have, here’s all you do:

Open up the Woman file and find the Hair folder in the Layers menu
Turn on the Long one (so it has an eyeball icon next to it) and all the others off (no eyeball)
Then within that Long folder, turn on the Blonde color and leave the rest off

And voila! There’s your long blonde ‘do.

Adding the Text & Festive Graphics

Once I had all four members of my family created (those adorable little boys! Gahh!), I simply created a new 5 x 7″ file (with 300 ppi since I’d be printing these out) and copy and pasted each of us onto it.

Next up, I added in some of the snowflake and holly graphics that are also included in the Personalised Portrait Creator, as well as a holiday greeting and our names in a font duo called Black & White.

It honestly couldn’t have been easier!

Printing the Cards

I printed out two cards at a time on sheets of 8.5 x 11″ glossy photo paper on our home printer, and cut them out with my paper trimmer.

All that’s left is addressing the envelopes and popping these beauties in the mail the first week of December….because getting a Christmas card in the mail before Thanksgiving is just too early, even for me.

Merry Christmas from the Backus Family!

And here’s how it turned out! Don’t we all look so festive and adorable?? And hallelujah for no closed eyes, grumpy faces, or crazy windblown hair!

I just LOVE how unique this card is, and the hand drawn portraits are just flat out FUN. I can’t wait to start playing around with other fun non-Christmas portrait ideas….so many possibilities!

I also turned our family portrait into a cute little animated GIF! I’m currently using it for my Facebook profile pic. I think it’s super adorable. :)