homemade christmas cards

I've been thinking of christmas cards forever, but of course I only got around to actually making some this past weekend. My life has been a blur lately... you know how it is!

I sorted through my drawers of papers and using my Epson desktop scanner scanned in several scraps that were appealed to me at the moment, and some scraps that had bits of yellow, green and red colours. 

Using Illustrator, I then drew an ornament shape and opened it up in Photoshop. I then used the outline of my Illustrator-drawn ornament to outline, copy and paste selections of my paper scans. Next, I again used my ornament shape and blurred it, then added it to another layer behind my paper ornament to give it a bit of a shadow and depth. 

I then arranged all my 19 ornaments along with my mock-up text, and drew hanging threads for my ornaments to dangle from. Then I deleted my mock-up text, and saved the image as a jpeg to place into illustrator, where I added my real text (including an itemized list of where the papers originated, and a reminder to please recycle). The typeface is Neutraface.

Using my desktop Canon printer, I printed the cards onto cardstock, trimmed them using a sharp new xacto knife, straight edge metal ruler, and a cutting mat. I then scored and folded the cards using my fiskars rotary paper trimmer with a scoring blade. I enclosed them all in pretty vintage 4x6" glassine envelopes, and added my mailing labels and stamps. And they're off... (I hope just in time!)

Its funny, that when writing my christmas card list, Along with aunts and uncles, old friends and new friends and neighbours, I had the urge to add so many 'online friends' to my list, beautiful souls Melissa, Geninne and Ana, Lori, Jenny, Jenn and Ella to name only a few. I don't have the addresses of most of these women, and I've never met most of them in real life. I actually feel like a bit of a weird stalker writing this! But somehow over the years, without my even realising, they have entered my heart and I feel like I should be sending them my christmas cards, too...

Life's funny that way. And good, that you can feel close to people that you have never actually met. Perhaps it's a sign that there is a tiniest glimmer of hope for the human race, afterall?