Create & Play : 5 Easy Steps to Create Unique Vacation Postcards for Friends and Family

Standard souvenir shop vacation postcards can often be bland, boring, and oh-so generic that you may think twice before parting with some of your hard-earned dollars to purchase a few to send home. In fact, most of the time you’ll flick through your own vacation shots and find a few that would make the perfect personalized postcard.

With the help of a bit of photo editing on your mobile, and some pre-made backing cards, you can turn these images into unique postcards to send back to friends and family. Here’s how to do it:

1) Find the picture/s you want to use as postcards, and open them in a mobile photo editor such as PhotoDirector App (for Android, iPhone and Windows 8).

2) You can now adjust and edit your photo to make the colors brighter, remove any objects you don’t want in the image, add a frame, and even add some text to let people know where you are.

Using the Removal tool in PhotoDirector App you can get rid of unwanted items in your postcard photo (Left). You can easily add text in a range of fonts and colors with the Text Bubble tool (Right).

3) Next, save the photo. With PhotoDirector App on Android you can save the image either on your device to an SD card. If you’re using the PhotoDirector iPhone app then you’re better off saving the image to a cloud storage location such as Dropbox.

4) With your images saved – it’s time to print them! Take your phone to a local photo shop, a department store (most should have photo printing machines available), or even send them hassle-free through apps like TouchNote. If you print them yourself, choose either 4” x 6” or 5” x 7” size. With the photos printed, there’s just one more thing left to do before you post them off.

If you print them yourself, you can buy postcard backings like this from The2Buds.

5) To quickly turn your photos into postcards, you can use special backing card, such as these from The2Buds. You will probably need to purchase these before you leave for your holiday, and also make sure you buy the right size for the photos you will be printing. With the backing card, simply peel off the adhesive backing, attach it to the back-side of your photo, and write your postcard message. Head down to the local post office or hit "send" in the one of the postcard sending apps, and send your unique postcards on their way.