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Family Christmas Pictures

With everyone coming home for the holidays, Christmas provides a wonderful opportunity to gather the family to take a more formal portrait. Many people choose to send out cards including the picture to friends and extended family wishing them season's greetings. Additionally, a beautifully made portrait can be a great gift for grandparents, godparents, and other such important people.

There are many different ways that people choose to do their holiday greeting cards. Some opt for collages, while others take formal portraits with a professional photographer. Still others include a picture from a vacation that year, and others just add in an at-home photo. Either way, as long as you are happy with the shot, it is a good option for a Christmas card. Here are some tips to set up and take a holiday picture that can proudly be displayed for years.

First, plan ahead for the picture details, such as location, photographer, etc. The holiday season is already stressful with gathering presents and making plans with family, which is why many people choose to use a picture from a summer vacation. However, if you want to take a photograph outside with a wintery background, you may have to wait until it gets cooler. If you want a photographer, this season can be busy, so be sure to book him or her in advance.

Secondly, consider a coordinating wardrobe. If you want your family to match completely, try to pick matching christmas shirts for family, such as a solid color shirt with jeans. On the other hand, asking for coordinating outfits is a great way for people to be able to show off a bit of their personal style while still looking polished. For example, ask everyone to wear shades of blue, or white. Lastly, you can always have the men wear the same shirts, while the women wear something else.

Next, think about props. If you are like one of the people mentioned above, who chooses to take their pictures way before the holiday season arrives, there are things that you can do to lend a Christmas flair to the photograph. Should you want to take the picture indoors, you can put up your Christmas decorations a little early so that you can use them as a backdrop. Also, consider having your family members wear a Christmas-y item, such as a Santa hat, reindeer antlers, or other such thing.

Lastly, once you take this perfect picture, you can have it framed so that you can give a larger, nicer copy to your relatives. Photos make perfect gifts for grandparents and other such important people in your life. However, if you want to make a photograph gift a little more meaningful, consider having it made into a canvas.

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Print On Demand Shirts - The Good, The Bad

Ever since Cafépress revolutionised the Print on demand shirts process, designers has steadily flocked to the service. First it were those passionate about t shirts and wanted t start their own t shirt business but it didn't take long for word to spread. Before long just about any person who had at shirt design ideas started opening up a shop and its here where the things started to go wrong.

Today there are millions of designs on thousands of products and that's just on Cafepress. There are other print-on-demand services like https://shirtly.com/, that are growing in size, and a whole bunch of smaller ones too.

The choice for customers became overwhelming. The challenge was to find the t shirt design you liked most in the midst of these millions of designs.

The question is how does talented designers make their products stand out?

Thanks to today's social media, like Facebook, Twitter and especially, the now very hot Pinterest, shopkeepers can promote their designs better than ever. Especially social media services like Pinterest and instagram, that are image based services, makes it really easy to share your designs. With instagram you can even apply effects to you images, giving it a professional look without the need for expensive studio gimmicks.

In fact you can takes shots of your friends wearing your apparel with your smartphone and make the shots look a million bucks, thanks to one of the many photography apps available for smartphones and then share it on your social media platforms.

This of course means that so can those with mediocre designs. The advantage that those with good designs have is that their products will get retweeted, liked en pinned.

Some websites like https://shirtly.com/ has also become an option for designers to get their t shirts noticed.

T Shirtcountdown works on a voting system and is not restricted to just print on demand tees. You just upload your design and then visitors can vote on the t shirts they like most. Up to a hundred t shirts in each category gets displayed. One of the benefits of T shirtcountdown is that they regularly rank within the top ten in Google searches, for various t shirt related keywords, which means that if your design gets voted to the top of its category you are likely to get some traffic and hopefully some customers to buy your designs.

There are also bloggers dedicating their sites to t shirt designs of their liking. If you believe your designs are up to scratch it may be worth your while to get in touch with these bloggers and get them to showcase your designs.

In the end what is a beautiful design for one person, may just be atrocious to another. It all comes down to who is better at marketing their product and a "designer" who does not take the time to put together a beautiful design will most likely not bother putting much effort into their marketing either.

[shirthouse]

What to Wear for Family Photos

More than any other question, clients always ask what they must wear to their family session. Coordinating your outfits will be a daunting task, but it doesn’t need to be! This post covers tons of tips to help you with styling.

To kick things off, here are some sample clothing boards and color palettes to jump-start you as you plan your family’s clothing. For fall, I’m loving warm tones like blush, burnt orange, and mustard! Keep scrolling for more general clothing tips below the boards.

I designed these for a family of four in order to cover options for women, men, boys, and girls – but I just wanted to add that I think families are beautiful no matter what form they take. The color palettes below will totally work whether you’ve got two people in your family, six people in your family, two moms, or two dads (and girls don’t have to wear dresses, either – I just included lots because I love them!) If you get stuck figuring out how to use these sets for your own crew, please feel free to reach out!

GENERAL CLOTHING TIPS

Want a fail-proof formula?

Put most of the family in different neutral shades (i.e. ivory, gray, beige) then add a couple of pops of coordinating color. See the sample palettes further down this post!

Start with one person.

It’s way easier to visualize the whole puzzle once you know what one piece looks like! Try starting with mom or daughter, since women’s clothing tends to possess more colors and prints.

Complement, don’t match.

The day of all white shirts and khaki pants are long past! We want colors that generally complement each other: so for instance, soft colors (light blue, gray, blush) or warm colors (brown, orange, burgundy), If you would like colorful images, then you should choose a more vivid color scheme for your outfits!

Generally, solids work best.

matching family shirts can definitely look great, but if you’re looking for a fail-proof family combination, go with solids. To keep things from looking boring, include textures (think chunky knits, tulle, lace, etc). Avoid tiny prints, especially small plaid and small stripes.

Stick to one outfit.

Don’t make things more complicated than they have to be! All you would like for an awesome family session is one outfit for everybody . Changing outfits will take time away from your shoot and can put your kids in a grumpy mood.

Consider your home decor.

If you’re planning to hang your images in your living room that’s decorated in all white, you probably don’t want your clothing to be dark. If you’re hanging them during a colorful nursery, then wear vivid outfits.

Plan for the weather.

Nothing is worse than being miserably uncomfortable in a perfect outfit. If you’re planning an outdoor session in November, think about coats, gloves, and hats. In the summer, dress in layers that you can easily take off if you get too hot.