Cute and Original Holiday card:

 

So last year  I started my holiday tradition of making my own holiday card using my favorite little piggies as the stars for the photos on the card :)  Last year I went on snapfish and used one of their templates to create a cute card.  Since the template I chose had candy canes and snow flakes on it, I went to the dollar store and found a snowflake dish towel and some plastic candy canes for the boys to pose with.  I didn't use a backdrop (you can see window blinds behind Monty) and I took the photo at night in a poorly lit room (which made everything look a little yellow). 

This year I thought I could do a little better with the shoot set up and chose to print the photo out as regular 4X6's (about $2 and I picked them up the same day from Walgreens!)  Since my home has better lighting during the day I took the picture during daylight hours and pulled the blinds up behind me (when I take pictures I've found that lighting from behind me is better than lighting from behind my subjects).  I also thought about my backdrop: I took an old sheet and threw it over our love seat; this made the boys stand out more and the background less busy. 

For props this year I found some "pet hats" from the dollar store!  They velcro underneath the chin or you can just put it on their head (Igore did not want to wear the chin strap!). 

 

For the text on the "card" I just thought about some funny holiday sayings and then used Photoshop Elements 8 to add text.  You could also add text using a basic paint program on your computer.  Just be sure to save the file as a JPEG.  When you've made your card the way you want, upload it online to Walgreens, Snapfish, CVS, etc. and add it to your cart.  On Walgreens you can click on your cart and preview how the photo will look when it's printed.  I used this feature and adjusted where I needed my text to be based on where the photo would be cropped when it was printed. 

If you choose to do this project with your pets and you're looking for ideas....you could put big bows on them and then type "Cute enough to go under the tree"  Or make some little scarves out of old clothes and type "Baby it's cold outside".  Those are just a couple off the top of my head; I'm sure you'll come up with some even more clever ideas ;)  Happy Holidays!!!!