I’ve used Shutterfly for a lot of different purposes, including uploading wedding photos to printing photos, to creating photo books, to creating cards.  Shutterfly doesn’t have the most expensive wedding photobook quality products, but they are a solid choice for holiday photo cards that will impress because the photo is awesome but eventually get thrown away.

In terms of designs, Shutterfly has gone above and beyond this year.  There are a whopping 720 holiday card designs to choose between.  It’s kind of crazy to think about.  To come up with this list, I went through all 720 designs.  It was very overwhelming, but I did get through them.  If you plan on creating photo cards this year, I recommend the following steps…

1. Start Early!  If you’re starting now, that’s good.  You’re actually a little late because there are several more steps to consider.
2. Pick the photo.  This is probably the hardest step.  If you know what photo you want to use and already have it available, you’re good to go.  If you’re like me this year and have no clue what photo you will use and are even thinking of taking a new one, you better get your butt in gear.
3. Edit the photo.  Get that image in tip top shape.  You can use photo services like Shutterfly to do some of the basics like cropping.  Picasa, another free product, will allow you to do a little bit more than cropping.  Lightroom and Photoshop for those who know more about editing.
4. Pick out your design.  This part takes forever if you don’t know what photo you’re going to use.  If you know the photo, you can eliminate a lot of the cool designs simply because it doesn’t work with your photo.
5. Holiday Card List.  Who are you sending the cards to?  If you don’t know who you’ll be sending them to then you probably don’t know how many you need.  You can’t order cards until you know how many you will need. Get cracking and save that list for next year!
6. You’re ready to order! Get on it and get it done.  The holidays will be here before you know it.
7. Bonus Steps: Special stamps?  Special personalized address stamps?  Do you need special pens to write on the cards?  Get those while you wait for your cards to arrive.

Now let me show off some of the designs that are up for consideration in my household.

***GIVEAWAY ALERT***

Shutterfly wants to giveaway 25 free cards to 3 of you special readers!  Deadline for entries is 5pm EST Friday, November 11th.  To enter this giveaway…

• Leave a comment below telling me your holiday card style (or that you don’t do cards).  You must leave your email address so I can contact you.
• Tweet the giveaway.  Then come back and leave an extra comment letting me know you tweeted it. Use this exact tweet: I just entered @OurWiredLives Shutterfly Giveaway for 25 free cards at http://wp.me/p1aUVl-sF
• Write a blog post about this giveaway and link to this page.  Come back and post a comment with the link to the page for another entry.

**Shutterfly gave me 50 free cards for writing a post on their services.  The opinions I wrote about are mine and are not skewed because of this offer.  Are you a blogger? Want a chance at 25 free cards this holiday season? Register here: http://goo.gl/DDw7Q**