inspired by Martina Bisaz

The best photo gift ideas for Christmas

High time to start thinking about Christmas presents. I’d like to inspire you with various offers from ifolor and perhaps therefore make the search for presents a bit easier for you. I’ve created and ordered seven photo products as Christmas presents and am going to present them to you now.
1. Wall calendar
I reported on wall calendars in a bit more detail in another blog post. I wrote about the mountains calendar for my Grandma. Well, as I have two Grandmas, I decided to also give my other Grandma a mountain calendar. This time a large wall calendar Panorama because the photos are showed off incredibly beautifully with this. My Grandma loves my pictures, whether photographed or drawn, she shows them off with great pride to all her visitors every time. Now she’ll be able to gush about a new picture every month. I think the quality of this calendar is superb. The colours, paper, print: everything is brilliant!



2. Photo mug
The photo mug can be designed very personally: a mug for the grandparents with a photo of their grandchild or a mug for your partner with a photo of their favourite pet, and even a mug for the godmother with the godchild’s drawings, for example. Be creative and think about which motif the person for the gift is really attached to. Everyone can really make use of a mug. I have to admit that I cheated a bit and created the mug for myself with a photo of my cat. I love tea and this kind of mug with my Negrito on it is simply a must in my home. I wanted to keep it really simple and selected a photo that is not very busy and where virtually just his black head can be seen. The light background blends into the white of the mug. What I can also imagine works really well as a subject for the mug is to have a simple black and white drawing, sketch or illustration scanned and printed on the mug as a photo. You could do this, for example, with children’s drawings and would therefore have a great present for grandparents or godparents. The mug is excellent quality, as is the printing too.



3. Photo display
I created the photo display for a friend from Ireland. She visited me me once with her old VW T1 camper van and we went on a spin with our two VW camper vans. We surprisingly made it up to the Albula Pass in the snow – and that was in mid-September! It wasn’t exactly pleasant driving through the snow with our two vintage campers but it did make for some unforgettable photos one of which I then used for the photo display of her wonderful T1. The photo display is ideal for photo memories of family, friends, relatives or pets. The display is produced out of a wooden panel with gloss plastic coating and comes with a stable stand: practical for any shelf or workplace. The print is very high quality and incredibly sharp. I really like it!



4. Wall decoration
I opted for a winter photo which I took a few years ago with my smartphone for the wall decoration. I still love the photo today and wanted to have it on a canvas. A canvas can make a photo look very artistic, thanks to the canvas structure, in keeping with the wintry atmosphere. And because the photo is also from an older mobile phone and the resolution is not the best, the canvas is a great option. As the canvas naturally makes the picture look rather artistic and not as sharp as, for example, with an HD Metal Print. I don’t know who I’m going to give this picture to yet. But anyone would be pleased with such a classic picture.



5. Smartphone case
Practically everyone needs a smartphone case nowadays. And a personalised one like this is really something special as not every Tom, Dick and Harry has one! It should be a picture that also means something to the owner as the smartphone and case are something that you always have with you and you have to like it accordingly. For me the smartphone case is a bit like a business card and should be closely related to the person. I’m going to give the smartphone case to my father. I have thought about what my father would like best? There are a few motifs that he would like. But there’s one thing for sure: he loves his old Engadine house where he did a lot of the renovations himself. So I’ve chosen a photo of a window for him. The windows in these old houses are really beautiful motifs. It’s a simple subject without many small details. I can imagine that photos of textures, structures or simple minimalistic photos are ideal for the case. You should bear one thing in mind though: the photo turns out a tiny bit darker on the case due to the matt print.


6. Photo puzzle
You can use the jigsaw puzzle as a present in different ways. I have a 5-year-old godson who is a massive fan of cars and naturally my VW camper van too. He’s always thrilled when he’s allowed to go on a spin with me in the camper van. And at the same time he loves coming to my parents (his grandparents) in Latsch. So I thought a jigsaw puzzle with my VW bus van standing in front of my parents’ house would be just the right thing for him. The jigsaw puzzle appears to be quite robust with matt photo paper on solid cardboard. You can choose between 50-, 196-, 500-, and 1000-pieces. I opted for the 50-piece puzzle for my nephew. With my second puzzle present I painted a massage voucher onto paper, photographed it with a bit of decoration around it and then had this photo printed on the puzzle. I’m going to give this to my mother for Christmas and she can put the voucher together herself. Keeping the excitement about what might be on the puzzle until the very end. My mother loves massages just like me and is sure to be thrilled with this little extra present. With the puzzle you should make sure that there is not too much empty space. This would make it pretty difficult to put the puzzle together. So here’s a tip: Always make sure that something is going on over the whole picture.



7. Photo greeting cards
Greeting cards are incredibly practical. You can use them all year round for different occasions, be it for birthdays, weddings or simply as a thank you. But now at Christmas they are of course an absolute must! And the great thing is that it’s a personal photo, which makes a Christmas card even more special. Winter landscapes are of course suitable for Christmas cards or take photos of details of Christmas decorations or a still life you’ve put together yourself. The cards are available in different formats. Whether it’s simple postcards or folded cards: they’re both high quality. All formats except the postcards are supplied with matching envelopes.



All the pictures in this feature were taken by Martina Bisaz and are subject to copyright.

Martina Bisaz
There is hardly any other Swiss person who has as many Instagram followers as her. Martina Bisaz, born in Grisons, impresses more than 235,000 followers with her landscape photos on the Instagram photo platform as kitkat_ch. She travels across Switzerland and all over the world in her vintage Fiat 500 and an orange VW camper van. And as with Heidi, it can also be said of Martina that the mountains are her world. Photos of impressive snow-capped mountains, turquoise blue alpine lakes and misty mountain ranges are her trademark. Martina Bisaz quit her job as a scientific illustrator in 2017 and has been working as a freelance photographer and dedicating herself to her Instagram account since then. Martina writes a blog about the world of photography and photo products for the ‘inspire’ photo blog from ifolor regularly.