Minted ~ Make Gift Giving Personal ~ Give Personalized Photo Art This Year

Discover Minted ~ A great website dedicated to bringing users great artwork, with options for personalizing your own photos or using designer-created art.

I've got a few people who have become very hard to get gifts for (grandparents, great-grandparents), but I find they really appreciate gifts that have meaning - so personalized photo art is a wonderful solution for me.

Minted has some wonderful categories for users to use their own photos to create professional looking works of art - they have special State Art, Letter Art, Foil Art and Regular Art...

Minted has made it easy to personalize your own creations - simply upload your photos (they even help you with that!), select your artwork, zoom in/out, preview, save and order - SO EASY!!

Here are a few of my own personalized favorites:

Minted has a great line of State Personalized Prints - here is Washington State:

And Letter Art:

Family ...

And so much more!!!...

With each print, you have the ability to select a frame if you want it framed.  The framing is beautiful!!

Be sure to check out Minted and see how you can make your precious memories into cherished artwork.

PS - they also have a great selection of personalized holiday cards as well.  And if you don't like to personalize cards or artwork, the designer cards and artwork are wonderful too.

A bit about the company and how designs are created:

After really looking at the site, I was amazed to find that Minted was started in 2007, and uses independent artists to create new and fresh artwork. These artists currently come from 48 different US states, and from 43 different countries.

 Designers participate in monthly Challenges, and then everyone votes on the designs. top designs are chosen and featured as artwork on Minted. This tells me that they are always going to be providing customers with new designs and artwork options. (It is also fun as a consumer to help vote!)

Disclosure: This is a sponsored post. After spending hours on the site learning about their products and customizing my own cards, I feel comfortable talking and sharing some of the Wow-Factor items that really caught my attention. My opinions and thoughts are my own.

Shutterfly For The Holidays! Create Your Own Holiday Cards, Photo Books and More (Photo Gifts Are GREAT For Family!)

One of my new favorite gifts for the holidays (especially for family) are photo gifts (take a peak at a few of our Christmas cards from years past!)!

To me, photo cards and gifts are thoughtful and serve to share joy with others. For the past few years I've tried to keep the immediate family (especially grandparents) in touch with the lives of our kids (and us of course) by sending them photo creations at Christmas instead of gifts that are often thoughtful but unwanted. SO... bring on the photo books, key rings and holiday cards!

I love to send and receive photo holiday cards. It is fun to share a special moment from our year with everyone, and it is a blast to see those special pictures and moments from friends and relatives who send out photo cards for the holidays.

Now that I have your attention, I'll tell you my BIG secret! I use Shutterfly to make all my photo creations and gifts easily and quickly!!

Why am I telling you about Shutterfly? I have been a huge fan of Shutterfly for about five years, and create photobooks and other photo items every year (not to mention the ease of having pictures printed and mailed to me, or using the 1-Hour photo service at Target via my Shutterfly Account). Also, by sharing my experiences with you here on Wendi's Book Corner as a blogger, I'm going to get 50 free holiday cards... I can't wait!

So want to create your own holiday card this year?

Check out some of these great links... cards are quick, easy, and help you send personalized holiday greetings to your friends and family!

· Christmas cards

· holiday photo cards

· birthday invitations

· calendars

· Christmas invitations

· Christmas gift tags

And just let me add that the cards are great for more than just Christmas cards! They are also great for...

• Birthday Invitations
• Thank you cards (just take a picture of your kid/s and/or family, create the cards, then let everyone add their own "Thank You" signature to the card with a colorful pen or crayon)
• Just Moved notices
• Home Party Invites
• Baby Announcements

Every year Shutterfly comes out with great new designs, and this year they are even better than ever with so many designs to choose from, including some with overlays that look amazing and add layers to the cards. So far, my favorite holiday designs this year are Holly Frame and Peppermint Bliss - what are your favorites?

About Shutterfly: (from their site)

Company Highlights

Founded in December 1999, Shutterfly is an internet-based social expression and personal publishing service. Shutterfly is headquartered in Redwood City, CA with manufacturing facilities in Phoenix, AZ and Charlotte, NC. Shutterfly is publicly traded on the NASDAQ stock exchange under the symbol SFLY. Shutterfly offers free online photo storage, and has never deleted a photo. Millions of customers have billions of pictures on Shutterfly. The Shutterfly flagship product is its award-winning photo book line, which helps consumers celebrate memories and tell their stories in professionally bound coffee table books. The winter holidays are the peak season at Shutterfly. Popular gift ideas include personalized photo books, holiday cards and calendars. Timeline In Spring 2010, Shutterfly announced the integration of the Simple Path photo book creation experience with Facebook, which allows Facebook users to access their photos and their friends’ photos to create premium quality photo books in minutes. Shutterfly was ranked number one in the "best photo book" category by TopTenREVIEWS.com in January 2010. In April 2009 Shutterfly introduced a new free photo sharing iPhone App that gives customers the power to upload, view and share their Shutterfly photos while on-the-go. The application, also compatible with the iPod Touch, is available free of charge at the Apple App Store. Followed by the initial launch of Designer Stationery in 2008, Shutterfly expanded their photo and non-photo stationery line with new coordinated suites of personalized Baby and Wedding Stationery in early 2009. At the end of 2008, the number of Shutterfly’s transacting customers totaled in 2.8 million people. Shutterfly customers placed more than 7.6 million orders in 2008. In September 2008, Shutterfly launched the Storyboard™ Tool which makes it quick and easy to organize and add pictures to a photo book. Users simply choose the photos they want to include in their book and the Storyboard Tool automatically chooses a suitable layout to fit the number and orientation of their photos. In August 2008, Shutterfly launched Shutterfly Share sites, a service that combines the best of photo sites, blogs, and social networking in a way that allows customers to easily connect and collaborate with friends and family in a safe and secure environment. In February 2008, Shutterfly launched Shutterfly Gallery, a community platform for sharing and connecting with others. This new Shutterfly social network leverages the power and enthusiasm of the viral Shutterfly community, allowing customers to creatively inspire one another by sharing their photo books online and exchanging comments about their experiences.

Disclaimer: I wrote this blog post in response to a TwitterMoms RAMBO alert, making me eligible to get 50 free Shutterfly Holiday Cards. You can learn more about Shutterfly at http://www.shutterfly.com.