Personal Holiday/Christmas Card 2007

Traditions are something that human beings absolutely love. Last year I started something I want to make into one.  For some reason, it was Decemeber 19th of 2006 and I decided that I was going to make Christmas/Holiday cards to give to all of my friends and family because I was kinda limited on funds. So I decided that I was going to go out and take a photo, use Adobe’s Photoshop CS2 and the handy skills I learned in Basic Computer at Kent State, I armed myself with an idea and cooked up something in about 5 hours. Later I had them printed inside and out at Kinkos in Rocky River.

To be fair though, I decided to make it say “Happy Holidays 2006” because I am one of those people.  I know a lot of people fight for being able to say Merry Christmas (“Jesus is the reason for the season”) and what not… but when it really comes down to it, the holiday season for me and a lot of people does not just include Christmas, but Thanksgiving, New Years and even Halloween (well I do at least!) Even more so, I include my birthday in the holidays anyways since its just before Christmas and everyone should celebrate it with me! I feel and understand that there is a ton of different reasons to celebrate at the near end of after all, religions and simply the fact that you survived another year! So “Happy Holidays 2006” it was. 

This year though, I have a lot more skill than I did the previous year, and I feel like showing it off a bit.  So I designed a Christmas/Holiday card by hand on paper in a doodle and then redrew the entire thing in Adobe Illustrator CS3. I really decided that I love Illustrator, I didn’t at first, but once I got a hang of it, its become one of my favorite programs to use.  I decided to use several different techniques this year in my card though.  I more or less drew everything by hand with the pen tool, some gradients here and there, and then I have this cool swirly ornamentation in the background for my wispy wind look.  Surprisingly though, this project has been a lot of fun and has gone remarkably quick considering I struggled with an idea for about 2 days before it hit me.

I am not quite done yet, and I don’t want to ruin it for anyone that might see this before they get their card.  So below you’ll see a little screen shot of a part of the card for this year.   So I hope everyone that gets one likes it, and for those of you who I am not sending one this year, I am very sorry.  I will try and save for it next year and get one to everyone!  I’ll also post the full-size here right before Christmas when everyone should get their cards so the rest of you can see!