PicMonkey Holiday Special: Our Favorite Creations Made by You

If we had our druthers, PicMonkey Nation, we’d celebrate your holiday creations in a beautiful parade, with each of your tweets, portraits, crafts, and collages on its very own float. Everyone would cheer, and then we’d all go out for cocoa and peppermint mochas.

A number of complications—obtaining parade permits, far-flung geographies, whether we’d make your tweets really big or the floats really small—have caused us to scale back our dreams. But we invite you to join us for a celebration nonetheless: please curl up with a hot beverage of your choice and enjoy our digital parade of user-made creations.

A very special Christmas gift

This holiday family photo does double duty as a birth announcement! We adore the personality packed into this pic: you can just see the joy radiating outta the soon-to-be-sibling’s face.

Christmas rapping

The winter holidays mean many different things to many different people. To some, it’s about spending time with family. To others, it’s all about presents. To yet others, it’s a time of year to express their love of gangsta rap. What’s the true reason for the season? Only your heart, and possibly N.W.A., can tell you.

Sew festive

Our friends at Spoonflower have teamed up with Hello Beautiful’s Emma Jeffery to bring you our very favorite kind of holiday DIY: the kind that makes you look like a masterful craft warlock while secretly being not-that-scary-difficult.Our suggestion: watch the video and learn their crafty ways. Then hand embroider your very own seasonal wall hanging, and brag forever because you hand embroidered something.

Costumes and critters

Behold, the fabled Catdeer! Half cat, half reindeer, half maraschino cherry, this magical beastie brings joy to the hearts of all who see it.

We also have to hand it to the Instacat behind this account, who replied to our request to use this image in the most adorable way possible: My mom says “go for it.” Extra points for typing such a nice message without the advantage of thumbs.

Mom-spiration

There is so much going for this portrait: it’s beautiful. It makes use of our brand-new templates, which makes us mega-happy because we love knowing that you guys are using all the stuff we make for you. But perhaps the greatest thing about this image is the caption:

Artwarming decor

“There’s a reason some people think they can do anything …

They listened to their mothers.”

We’re ga-ga and starry-eyed over these keepsake ornaments crafted by Rebecca of Simple As That. If you’re going to use ornaments again and again, they ought to be really special, and these guys are a unique blend of rustic appeal plus photo-editing awesomesauce.

P.S. Wanna make personalized gift tags that spotlight kids’ art? Rebecca’s got a tutorial for that too.

Fairytale of New Yorkie

Here is an amazing fact about this pair of adorable, holiday-garbed Yorkies: it’s not actually two Yorkies. It’s one Yorkie that’s been duplicated!

With all the debate about where technology is taking us and what it’s wrought, we hope that you take as much comfort as we did in the fact that, sometimes, technology brings you double puppy pics.

Spendin’ nothin’ for Christmas

At PicMonkey, we firmly believe that design belongs to everyone. Human beings are a creative bunch with a lot of feelings, and everybody should be able to express themselves—that’s why we’re stoked that the good people of The Homespun Hydrangea have given us this card-making hookup. Your perfect holiday cards for pennies each? Yeeeeeees, our master plan is coming along nicely.

Maybe next year

When the holidays come around, you know a new year—and new year’s resolutions—are hot on their heels. So start looking to the year ahead with your very own digital vision board.

Tip: Because the future is ever-changing, once you’ve finished your board, why not save it to Hub so you can easily add to it whenever inspiration strikes?

Table manners

Nods, paper craftstress extraordinaire and longtime friendface of PicMonkey, is wowing us again with these charming fancy place cards. We appreciate the three-dimensional element brought by adding buttons, as well as the way a well-placed script makes anything feel festive.

Happy feet

The only thing that’s cooler than this kick line Facebook banner is that its creator also posted a video demo of how to make one for yourself. The snowflakes are also pretty cool. But not quite as cool. Sorry snowflakes, always the bridesmaid and never the bride.

Whatever the holidays hold for you, PicMonkeyers, we hope that you spend them happy, safe, and creative. The PicMonkey team can’t wait to see how you rock it out in 2017.

The possibilities are endless when you get a PicMonkey membership.
Elisa Chavez

Elisa Chavez is a content writer here at PicMonkey, where she hopes to change the world one dinosaur selfie at a time. She is also a nationally ranked slam poet, champion shopper, and doting dog mama.