ALT-3 Do it yourself Fathers Day Cards
It's a very loving gesture to make a Father's Day card for your dad or granddad. You can do it quickly and inexpensively by using the creative material available to you on the internet. Why drag yourself out to the supermarket to buy an over-priced, over-sentimentalized Father's Day card for five bucks, plus shell out another 42 cents for snail mail delivery? Just surf the internet and find thousands of funny, sentimental, racy or serious Father's Day card that you can send absolutely free to dear old dad.
Actually, many internet cards are very clever, including some that offer animation, music and sound system where you can record a message of your own voice to go out online with the card. Most online cards are free, while some of the more sophisticated ones require a couple of bucks for membership fees. The cost could be worthwhile if you plan to use the same service for later greeting card needs.
If you feel creative, I suggest a totally original email card for your dad. If you have even the simplest of graphics software, you can create a colorful ecard on your computer desktop for free, and then preserve it as a jpeg. And unlike when you made dad a card when you were in grade school, you can illustrate and letter it without ever get your hands all full of paint. The varieties are virtually endless. For instance, often when preparing my online greeting cards, I dig through my old albums and find vintage photos. I copy them on my scanner, often cropping and cleaning them up.
Last year, I created a Memorial Day greeting card for my older brother and sister, both now in their 80s. I found a wedding photo of our mom and dad, circa 1918, when he was in his World War I uniform. It was so badly darkened with age, and terribly scratched, I could hardly make out the images. By working with my photo software, I was pleasantly surprised when I could carefully clean up the scratches and brighten the image to visual quality I hadn't seen in decades. I added a type message appropriate for the holiday and sent it out as an email to my brother, sister and other relatives. They were very happy to receive the cards, and several copied my restored photo and framed it.
Most greeting ecards I send to my kids feature family photos of them when they were little. Additionally, for creating my wife's Mother's Day cards, I use the same computer process. I print them on glossy paper, cut to fit envelopes and leave them on the kitchen table the night before for her to discover at breakfast time.
For Father's Day, I still get snail mail cookie-cutter grocery store cards from nieces and nephews, and I appreciate their feelings. However, my own kids, who are much more creative with their computers than I will ever be, dig into their own old photo albums and design their cards to dad to include photos of me when I was much younger, often in baseball, track, soccer and Navy uniforms. Last Father's Day, my son found a 40-year-old photo of me holding him being carried out of the delivery room when he was one minute old, and he designed a card to go with it. When I received it, I couldn't see the computer screen for several minutes through the tears.
Now that my kids are fathers and mothers themselves, our holiday ecards we exchange now include photos of another generation of potential subjects for this year's and future cards. This Father's Day, if you have the computer equipment and smarts to do it, design and add a nostalgic photo to an original ecard for your dad. If your dad can't receive email, design and print your card and send it by snail mail. He'll be happy to know you cared enough to take the time to honor him on his special day. And, if you send it by email, all it will cost you will be a few minutes to show him a lifetime of love.
