Picnikers: Put down your cookie sheets, step away from the candles, and get out from under the mistletoe! December is upon us and you don’t want to be late sending out those holiday greeting cards.

We here at Picnik would like to invite you to be kind to yourselves during the busy holiday season. Leave the boxed cards at the store, the car in the garage and the cookies in the oven because our new Holiday Greeting Wizard will guide you through perfectly customizable cards for everyone in your address book before the kitchen timer dings.

Just click Send a Greeting at the top of the Holiday Features list in the Create Tab to put your festive photo into one of our custom, customizable Holiday Greetings. Or upload a new photo by clicking the Try It Now! button on the Home Page. Choose your style, select a color scheme, write your own message and email it instantly to family and friends. Or save even more time by sending it to Buzz, Facebook, or Twitter.

Don’t forget to send a copy to yourself so you can print it out and put it on the fridge. Just in time to rescue the cookies, finish lighting the candles and take up your position under that mistletoe.

The sleigh bells are ringing, the jingles are belling, everything is turning red, green and gold, and blue and silver, which means it’s time to deck your photos with all the festive and jolly that Picnik has to offer this year!

New Effects! Like Winterize, which instantly turns your photo as cool as a frosty day (goes great with Snow!)

New Stickers! Like Candy Canes, Dreidels, and Sketchy Christmas shapes to go with the Santa Hats and Mandarin Oranges and Holly.

A Jolly White Beard! Because honestly, what good is a Santa Hat without the Santa Beard?

New Gift Tags and Fancy Collages! Perfect for gift wrapping and cards, don’t forget to use our full Touch Up suite to get your family photo perfect!

And New Holiday Textures! Make your photos merry and bright with our sparkly, snowy new photo overlays.

Happy Holidays, and Merry Picniking!

Vicki Dvorak, blogger, children’s art instructor, mother, and photographer is our 18th Featured Picniker. Vicki grew up with a father working in Forestry and Agriculture, which meant she spent her childhood moving around the Western States (California, Colorado, and Washington), and using her own creativity to entertain herself: making her own doll houses, doll clothes, collages, sketching and painting and never being bored because, with her creative mind, she always had something to do.

Vicki took this creative streak (and inability to sit quietly behind a desk) and put it to work studying Recreation Leadership after high school and working as a children’s recreation leader, camp director and preschool art instructor. Since then, she’s gotten married, had three children, and as her kids have gotten older has been so excited to discover a new creative outlet: photography!

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It’s that time of year again! The days are growing shorter, the clocks are turned back, the leaves are changing color and people in the Southern Hemisphere are basking in the sunshine that’s skittered away from those of us shivering up north: It’s Fall! (Or Spring!)

Here in the US, we’re getting ready for the Thanksgiving holiday. A whole day dedicated to giving thanks for the gifts we’ve been given with a big turkey dinner shared with friends and family (and a full three days afterwards to recover and eat leftovers), Thanksgiving is a special time full of memories that people like to capture in their photos.

This year we have a fabulous new offering for everyone making the most of the Fall season with new Fall Fancy Collages, Autumn-themed Stickers and a new Autumn Leaves Frame to wreathe your photos in the fiery colors of the season.

November is Movember, a whole month devoted to supporting and raising awareness for research and issues surrounding prostate cancer and men’s health. Men around the world show their support by starting clean shaven on November 1 and then growing a moustache for the entire month.

Free for the month of Movember, Picnik invites people of all genders to support their Mo Bros by using our new Beards tool to paint on a truly excellent moustache for your Facebook profile pictures, Twitter avatars, blog portraits, family snapshots, and anywhere else you’d like to commit yourself publicly to this worthy cause.

Picnik now has Textures! The ability to overlay a texture on your photos is one of the things we here at Team Picnik get asked about the most, so we’re really happy to be able to launch it for all our Premium Members.

Textures are great for adding an extra level of interest or dimension to your photos, like a hint of a hand-written letter, or something edgier with an urban graphic or go natural with a subtle rain pattern or fabric.

We have over fifty photo overlays to choose from, all taken by us! Many of them were taking by former Team Picnik Member Chelsea Fisher, whose portfolio of work you can see here, and the rest by current Team Picnik Member Anthony. You can find the Textures in the Artistic section of Effects.

Textures are an amazing way to add depth and character to your photos, and for tips and an in depth how-to, see this tutorial video. Happy Picniking!

A few months back we launched a Product Ideas page to gather your ideas and insights for Picnik. We received hundreds of ideas and thousands of votes. We were encouraged, humbled and amazed by the ideas and the enthusiasm we saw. We found so many ideas we are already working on which told us we were on the right track; has a few “why didn’t we think of that!” moments; and saw so many incredibly creative ideas.

A few of the suggestions we saw we even have plans to release before the end of year. Some are big enough that they’ll take a bit longer; in classic Picnik style we want to make sure we can provide you features that are not just technically feasible but easy and enjoyable to use.

Whether your idea launches on Picnik or not we loved hearing from you and thank you for sharing your thoughts. Because we loved it so much, we thought we would do it again by tapping into Picnikers’ creativity for ideas around the holiday season. What types of things would you like to see to help celebrate your favorite festive holiday? Submit your ideas or vote on what others have to say. We can’t wait to see what you come up with!

Everyday at Picnik we’re blown away by the amazing photos that Picnikers share in our forum challenges, add to our Flickr group, and post on our Facebook page.

Picnikers all have their own unique way of making these masterpieces, so what better way to share your tips and tricks than in person at one of our Picnik & Tell Meetups, which will be happening in cities around the world on November 3rd.

All attendees* will receive a complimentary 1 month Picnik Premium account trial after completing a short feedback survey. Plus, Picnik team members in Seattle, San Francisco, and even New Zealand will be on hand to say hello!

Everything you need to participate is on our Picnik & Tell Meetup site. To find a Meetup near you, click here or do a quick search on the map. To join a scheduled event, click on the I’m Interested button on the Meetup details page, or if you don’t see one listed, click on Schedule a Meetup to create one.

When you start or join a Meetup, consider volunteering to be the Meetup organizer. That gives you the ability to set the venue and time of the party. Anyone can do it, plus you may get the opportunity to be featured here on the Picnik blog (and all the fame and glory that comes along with it).

Also, don’t forget to comment on your city’s party details page—you can use it to chat and plan with your fellow attendees prior to the Meetup.

So grab a few friends and your favorite Picniked photos (brownie points if you use our new Halloween Effects) and we hope to hear all about it on November 3rd.

Happy Picniking!

*Void where prohibited

Team Picnik has put together four spine-chilling tutorial videos for our new collection of Halloween effects: Making yourself undead in a few clicks; taking your photo from normal to paranormal by layering Halloween textures; adding swashbuckling scruff to someone who needs it with Picnik’s beards, and this tiny ghost’s horror movie debut, below:

Head on over to our help center to see all four tutorial videos, and let us know what you think!

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month and Picnik would like to make it easy for everyone to support this important cause with our Pink Ribbon Effects and stickers. Try it out on your profile pictures, Twitter avatars, blog images and anywhere else you think it would help increase awareness and education about the issues surrounding breast cancer.