Birth Announcements on the Cheap

Baby stuff for some reason is ridiculously expensive. With all the extra expenses a baby brings into a household it had me looking for deals and how we can save money. Despite being on a budget I didn’t want to sacrifice having fun with my new baby, like spreading the news of my little girl with birth announcements. 

After coming home from the hospital (and when I had a spare minute) I did some shopping and found that birth announcements through photo services were one dollar each. This doesn’t sound like a lot, but I figured I needed to order about 75 and when you have to order in bulk, that is money that could be used on diapers or other essentials! So I got a little more creative and came up with another option which was dramatically cheaper and I ended up paying about $13 instead of $75.

So are you wondering how I saved so much ? It involved a little bit of work but was well worth it. Here is how I did it. 

I looked at some other birth announcements for some inspiration. Once I figured out a design idea I picked out the photos that I wanted to use. We were lucky enough to have some great shots of our daughters early days. I also have sister-in-law who is very talented when it comes to photography. So we decided to go with those pictures. 

Next I went to my favorite photo editing tool, Picmonkey.com. I used Picmonkey’s collage tool. I reformatted the pixel size to match up the photo size that I wanted. I went with 1200 x 1800 pixels for a 4 x 6 size photo. Here is a list of photo sizes and their pixel dimensions that is very helpful. 

After my page size was formatted, I picked out a collage style I wanted to use. I wanted to keep it simple so went with a square deal variation. Then I added my pictures and readjusting them to my liking. I kept one section blank because that is where my text will go. I selected the swatches tool and added a decorative swatch to the text box. Lastly I added a background color. After doing a bit of tweaking and I liked how the pictures looked, I saved the picture. I saved mine as a png. This file size gives you a good quality image.

After saving the image I went back to Picmonkeys main page and selected, edit photo. I then uploaded the collage I just made. I used picmonkey's text and shape tools to created all of the birth info. I even added a cute little owl. After I liked how it looked, I saved it. 

So I had my digital file complete! I then went to Target's photo service and ordered my prints. I've used plenty of other photo sites before but I prefer Target because the prints are a great quality and they are the least expensive. If you give it a try let me know how it turns out!