Our friends at Flickr have a timely reminder that it’s not too late to send holiday cards this year!

Especially those of you who, like us, are stuck in the snow-bound Pacific Northwest region and haven’t been able to find their cars let alone go downtown for last-minute shopping (even if the roads were open, which they’re not), using Picnik to “holiday-up” your own photographs to send to family and friends (see the Flickr examples above) is quick, easy, guaranteed on time, and requires absolutely zero winter driving skills.

An excellent place to start is in our new Premium collection of Fancy Collages from the talented people at Plain Digital Wrapper. And don’t forget to light a menorah candle and spin a dreidel with our new Hanukkah shapes!

the Picnik kids play in the Seattle snow

And lastly, do Santa a favor in all this wintery weather and help lighten his load with Picnik Premium stocking stuffers for everyone on your list! Just $24.95, it’s the gift that keeps on giving photo editing joy all year long.

Picnik’s gift generator has gotten a massage to make it even easier to give your favorite someone the gift of Premium awesomeness for a whole year! Perfect for everyone on your list, click here and you’re guaranteed to have your gift code before Christmas! In fact, you’re guaranteed to have your gift code before you can say “Well that was easy!” Either email the happy news to your happy recipient, or print out a custom card for a little extra physicality.

For just $24.95, the gift of photo-editing awesomeness to your friends, family, teachers, in-laws, and secret crush gives them access to all of Picnik Premium’s features and content for a whole year. Not to mention, it’s light on packing materials!

Brenda, our Community Liaison in Charge of Flickr Operations and Antipodean Branch Office Manager, has announced the December Flickr Picnikers Contest topic: Holidays Around the World! This month is special because, as she says, the photos need to be of “recognizable or unique landmarks in your part of the world,” but with a Christmas twist! We want to see where you’ll be celebrating the holidays this year, either in reality or in spirit.

Plus, follow the instructions, and your photo will be featured on the map Brenda put together, and on the one below! As always, the winner will receive a whole free year Picnik Premium, and the two runners up free 3-month subscriptions of Picnik Premium.

View Larger Map

We want to encourage all our users to take part in this contest to really get a sense of where everyone is. So we’d like to encourage all our users who haven’t yet to create a Flickr account, join the Flickr Picnikers group, and take part in the contest!

Also, we’d like to congratulate the winners of last month’s contest, “Picnik Yourself”, with a two way tie for first place:

Goldscale’s “i live for that look”	konabluee’s “Watch the World Go By”

And in 2nd and 3rd place:

nahomie123’s “Day 23″	jennwyers’ “DSC05397″

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! For those of you who have been curious about all the turkeys and pilgrim hats, pies and cornucopias in our Shapes section, today is the day where the entirety of the US (except the poor grocers) takes the day off and to celebrate the bounty of the New World, stuff themselves with turkey dinners and pie. And then tomorrow, the day after Thanksgiving, we take another day off, and go shopping!

That’s right, the Friday after Thanksgiving is lately becoming commonly known as “Black Friday”, and not because of the mall traffic: the Christmas shopping season is when most retailers finally go in the black. In these trying economic times, of course, consumers are looking for smart, intelligent, perhaps even environmentally friendly, possibly even free alternatives for the usual holiday giving options.

If you feel like this describes you, Team Picnik Members will be downtown Seattle tomorrow handing out free Picnik Premium Samples! Look for us around 4th and Pine in among the crowd gathering to watch the lighting of the Christmas tree and Macy’s star!

We’ve launched a wildly popular Eye Color Tool in Touch Ups, making it easier than ever before to get the eye color you’ve always deserved, and a color picker to go where nature never intended!

Also, now in Shapes: Have you noticed the increasing crispness to the air? Southern Hemispherers, has playing Beach Rugby given you a taste for tinsel? Christmas Shapes are back! Which means Santa Hats are again available for dogs, ducks, and Flickr avatars! Plus stickers, wreathes, stockings and snowflakes, with more on the way!

Finally, there’s a new Frame: Postage Stamp! Just in time for those holiday e-cards, turn your photo into a stamp and save the 42¢.

Tuesday is Veterans Day here in the States. Because the Civil War gave us a Memorial Day which predated World War I, we use November 11 slightly differently than the rest of the world. We honor our veterans, while elsewhere in Europe and the Commonwealth, it is Armistice or Remembrance Day, commemorating the end of that war and remembering the fallen.

To help mark the day and the period leading up to it, we’ve added some new Poppies to our Shapes collection.

And don’t forget to visit the sites of the Royal British and Royal Canadian Legions.

Friday was Halloween and although we were short on ghosts and goblins, we were certainly haunted by many weird and wonderful creatures, pictured below.

By the time the picture was taken, Steve Jobs and the Hairy Ghoul had left to manage the trick-or-treaters at home, and Spiderman, Princess Leia, and Ruby the Bee had come to say hi to their dads and gone again.

Saturday and Sunday were just as fun for us here at Picnik World Headquarters, because this Halloween weekend was our biggest weekend ever! We just never get tired of saying that.

The month of October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month and Breast Cancer Awareness has been the theme of this month’s Flickr Picnikers Contest! And the winner of the prestigious and coveted 1-year Picnik Premium subscription has been:

jennad4586

The two runners up, and winners of 3-month Picnik Premium subscriptions: kibishipug and C V.D P.

It’s that time of year again… Picnik has gone spooky! All of last year’s crowd-pleasers are back, with some great new additions.

Shapes! Add everything from jack-o-lanterns to ghosts to witches, or even disguise yourself with our forty limited edition Halloween shapes (that’s over twice as many as last year!).

Fonts! we’ve got eight of the spookiest, creepiest fonts around. Now you, too, can spell your name in skeletons.

Effects! Feeling a bit animated? Get reanimated with Zombify, then add a little color to that ghoulish face with Blood Stains.

Meanwhile, we’re afraid that Jonathan has begun staring hungrily at Darrin’s neck again (although he says it’s because he skipped lunch), Darrin keeps having to excuse himself to shave again (at least he’s not blaming it on his cats this time), and Mike keeps saying he’s going to the gym, but why the mumbling about brains?

We’ve got some other goodies to unveil as well! First up, a completely redesigned Welcome Page! Featuring tours, featured features, featured Picnikers, news from the blog and much more. Next up: Awesomer painting! Now when users select the brush tool in many of our Effects, they’ll see it’s vastly improved (and much faster) with new Brush Hardness and Brush Strength sliders! This is just the beginning of lots of shiny newness and improvedness we’ve got in the works.

Happy Halloween from Team Picnik!

Help raise awareness during Breast Cancer Awareness Month with Picnik’s Go Pink! and Frame it Pink! All of October is dedicated to increasing awareness and public discourse about issues surrounding Breast Cancer, which is why we’ve added the new Effects and an expanded section of Pink Shapes.

Looking for a good place to start? Our friends at Flickr have announced a new group to raise money for Breast Cancer awareness and research. For every pink pic added to the group, their parent company Yahoo! will donate one Euro to Breast Cancer charities across Europe! So send your pink pic to Pink 2008!

And this month’s Flickr Picniker Award Theme is Go Pink, so don’t forget to enter your Pink productions to win a whole year of Picnik Premium (now with added Pinkness)!