Made 2 Craft: Photo Greeting Card

Use a favourite photo to make a greeting card - It's just like scrapbooking

I've made a Christmas greeting card with the main image being a photo that was taken last year of our dog - she doesn't look very impressed does she? :) I didn't get many photo's before she knocked the antlers off!

Scrapbooking style greeting card using a photo

I wanted to show you that you could easily make a Christmas card using the same skills as scrapbooking. For those that have not heard of scrapbooking - it's a way of making a photo album but you use special acid free patterned papers and decorate the page with your photo's, buttons, ribbons, tickets, die cuts, stamps and finish it off with a bit of journaling to describe the photo.

My card is relatively plain compared to most scrapbooking pages. But scrapbooking is very personal - you make it to please your eye. If you made your card without a greeting on the front, it could always be framed after the recipient has received it.

I've used a picture of my dog, but it could easily be a lovely snowy scene, your children, family or photo's of food! I've also used a digital photo that I have made smaller using a free piece of software called Gimp (You can download it here). I'll show you how easy it is to make your photo's smaller. You could just as easily use a pre printed photo if the sizing of the image works for your card.

Follow the below link to find out how the card was made

You will need

Digital photo (you can use a pre-printed one if the size is ok for your size greeting card)
Printer and photo paper
4 fancy rectangle dies (measuring roughly - 11 . 5 cm by 8 cm, 9 . 5 cm by 6 . 5 cm, 5 . 5 cm by 4 cm and 4 . 5 cm by 3 cm)
Holly leaf die
3 red buttons (You can use gems or die cut small red circles instead)
6 inch square white base card
Christmas patterned paper
Dark green and beige card
Greeting stamp (I used 'Merry and Bright' from Tidings and Trimmings stamp set by Stampin Up)
Dark green ink pad (I used evening evergreen by Stampin Up)
Die cutting machine
Glue

Open Gimp and then click on 'File' from the top tool bar, followed by 'Open'. Locate your photo and click open. Your photo will now open in the main window.

Click on 'Image' from the top tool bar followed by 'scale image'.

In the dialogue box that opens, click on the chain icon (shown by the first red arrow) so that it looks like a solid chain link rather than a broken one (This will ensure if you change one of the sizes the other one will change proportionally). Then click on the down arrow by the second red arrow in the below photo, to change the measurements from pixels to cm. You can now adjust the height of the photo. I've changed mine to 12 cm because that's the biggest rectangle die I have and the image I wish to use is slightly smaller than the whole photo. When I enter the new height and press return, the width amount also changes. Click 'Scale'. Your photo will now be smaller. This will be a little trial and error to get the image the size for what you need. My dog in the photo will now fit perfectly into the 9 . 5 cm by 6 . 5 cm sized rectangle die I have

Print the photo onto photo paper by clicking on 'File' then 'Print'. Change your printer settings if necessary

Using the 9 . 5 cm by 6 . 5 cm fancy edged rectangle die, cut out your image from the photo

Using the largest rectangle die (11 . 5 cm by 8 cm) and the one measuring 5 . 5 cm by 4 cm, cut one of each from dark green card. Also cut two holly leaves from dark green card