It is Christmas card time again. This year I am only doing ours and my parents. Last year my Grandfather passed away and I created one last card in his memory. It makes me sad to be in this season and not be making a card for him.
Each year Rebecca (my wife) writes our card text. She is very creative and always comes up with a unique and fun way to let people know how and what we are up to as a family. We get a family pic taken, which could be the subject of a reality TV show. Then I design and print a card based on the pic and her text.
This year we wore orange and brown and she wrote an acrostic to the word “Blessings” so I came up with this:
I added the “2010” to the ball on the front, removed the reflection of the photographer from the multiple balls on the inside, and did some hue and saturation manipulation to get all the colors to match.
My parents arrange to get a picture of the whole family each year also. Of course, the only ones they are actually interested in are the grandchildren, but they us in the pic too. Then my mom sends me the pic and a verse and says, “I don’t have any ideas, whatever you come up with will be fine.” So I do and it is:
For the front I used a rustic window pic that I had to add a pane to on the right. Then I clipped out the glass so I could have the pic show through in a frosted glass effect. Throughout the card I tried to pull colors from the pic and give it a Christmas look without it being red and green. On the back I always make a diagram of the photo with the names of each person for all the people on my mom’s list that don’t see her grandchildren very often.