How to Find or Make Special Occasion Ecards

Finding an ecard that is appropriate for a specific holiday or occasions is as easy as saying the alphabet nowadays. Hundreds and hundreds of ecard websites are available online, and most, if not all, have already covered all the major special holidays and occasions such as birthdays, Christmas, New Year’s Day, Valentine’s Day, and graduation. Other occasions such as giving birth to a new baby, homecoming, and the like have also been covered as well. Even just saying thanks or sending a get well note can be done with a couple of clicks on an ecard website. Basically, all of the known occasions and reasons for giving an ecard are available to you. This does not mean however, mean that Hallmark, 123 Greetings, or any other online ecard websites have everything covered. The reality is that there are still some of those special but somewhat uncommon occasions that have no or very few ecards associated with them yet.

Customizing an Ecard Online

While most ecard websites may not have ecard templates for occasions like a monthsary, a celebration of your child winning a tennis match, or congratulation your friend for his first taste of debauchery, there are websites that will allow you to customize the ecard you plan to send to make it more appropriate to an occasion. Websites like Rattlebox, which is a video ecard provider, allows users to edit the text in a video. For instance, say a friend of yours has just completed his first manuscript. Obviously, you would want to congratulate him, and rightly so. Unfortunately, Rattlebox does not have a fixed template for that specific occasion. Not to worry. All you need to do is choose a template with a somewhat relevant video on the ecard and edit the text message to tailor-fit it to the occasion.

Other websites, like Rattlebox, even offers a way for user to full customize a special occasions ecard. For instance, Buzzle.com is an online article repository that also offers free custom ecards where a user can fully customize an ecard online and use Buzzle to send the ecard to the intended recipients. The customization allows a user to upload images that will be used for the ecard as well as input the message or text on it. This is just one example. There are a number of websites that provide the service completely free of charge. Other sites, on the other hand, will provide a lot more customization as well as content for a more intricately specialized ecard for a fee. If it’s the card you want, we’d recommend spending a bit rather than agonizing over an imperfect card design. If you really don’t want to spend money on an ecard, then the other option available to you is to make the ecard yourself.

Making the Ecard Yourself

If you cannot find any suitable ecards online, there is really one more option to turn to:do it yourself. While most people may be a little frightened at the prospect of having to create an ecard on their computer using software like Adobe Photoshop, Microsoft Publisher, and the like, mostly due to the complexities and the need for creativity, the truth of the matter is that creating an ecard from scratch is relatively easy. One simple way of doing it is by using Microsoft PowerPoint. That’s right – I said Microsoft Powerpoint. PowerPoint is more than just a fancy corporate presentation tool. Imagine creating an ecard for virtually any occasion that consists of multiple slides. If you think about it, it’s like creating a flash animated ecard. And, if you do it right, you can even insert videos, music, and other worthwhile content to the ecard. So, let’s get started.

Open up Microsoft PowerPoint and start a new slideshow project. The first thing you will need to do is to decide on the background of the slide. The left side panel should provide you with background templates you can use. You may download background templates from www.office.microsoft.com should the existing templates not suit you. Alternatively, you can use a digital photo as the background as well. The panel will also allow you to time and integrate the ecard with background music. In any case, choose the background and apply it on the slide.

Since you will be creating multiple slides, use the right panel and create as many slides as you want. Make sure to have the additional slides emulate the first slide so that they will have the same backgrounds. Alternatively, you can use different backgrounds per slide. Once that is done, it is time for some content. At this point, it is really up to you. You will want to add in some text, or a clever card message. Just add more text boxes to a slide should you need more. If you want to insert a photo or a video to a slide, simply use the “insert” tab at the top menu. Simply resize and position the media on the slide anyway you want.

When you are done customizing your PowerPoint ecard, save and send it via email. In some cases, the file may be a little big depending on the content you inserted into the presentation ecard. It is recommended to keep this particular type of special occasions ecard to a 5Mb minimum for easy delivery.