Sending online greeting cards to family and friends is fun, easy to do, saves the expense of a greeting card from the store, and reduces paper waste all at one time! There are a number of websites that allow you to do this for free.

In this Lesson Plan, taken from our Get Connected Section we will be using 123greetings.com to create our cards. It's a great website that offers some fun ideas for connecting with your loved ones.

1. First let’s leave our campus and go out to their website. Type http://www.123greetings.com/ in your Address Bar to go to the 123greetings.com home page.






2. The photos and graphics you see in this Lesson Plan may be different from what you see on 123greeting's webpage because they change daily. The page also changes according to the season and what is most popular with other ecard users.  Take a minute, and look around the home page to see the many current options available to you.
   
   
3. In this Lesson Plan we will be creating a birthday card for practice. Click on the Birthday tab toward the top of the screen. Again the pictures change daily, but the way the site works stays pretty much the same as you will see in the instructions below.
   
   
   
   
   
4. Scroll down a bit to find the thumbnail options for birthday cards. For this lesson we will choose the first thumbnail under Recently Popular (remember what is "recently popular" will change over time). You can choose any card you want and the rest of the Lesson Plan will still make sense...so click on one of the birthday card thumbnails.







5. This will take you to a screen where you can play the e-card to see if you like it. Just click on the word Play in the middle of the screen to preview the card.







6. If you don’t like the card, click the Back button at the top left corner of your monitor to go look for another card. If you do like the card, click the Send this card button at the bottom of the box.
   
   
7. This will take you to another box where you type in your text. You can choose the Font you want, Font Size, Font Color or Center your text using the toolbars you see in the image below.
   
   Note: If you type your information in before you select font options, you will need to select your text first...just click on any word three times and the whole message will highlight. Then you can to make things different colors or sizes or whatever.







8. When you are finished typing your message scroll down and fill in the Receiver Details. Add the Name and Email Address of the person you are sending your card to. You can also use the checkboxes under Notifications. When you are finished, click the Send this card button at the bottom of the box.







9. The card will be processed and a Thank You message will appear to affirm that your card has been sent. Now you can click the Send this ecard to someone else button if you want to send another card.

If you wish to return to the Home Page to create another card just click the Home tab:

Easy to use and easy on the environment—can’t beat that combination!