Christmas Cardiology

  

This year I'm going to do much better with Christmas cards: last year it was too little too late (and we got more cards from Real estate agents than friends) :0(

In previous years we've had some very cute home-made cards pieced together from my first two attempts at Do-It-Yourself child's passport photos, which you can laugh at here.


This one above I still adore and it will forever be a part of our little family's history.

My second D.I.Y Passport photo shoot was less successful because I didn't manage to produce a useable passport photo at all. I just snapped away while she giggled, wriggled, cracked up, and generally made fun of my seriousness. But these shots were super-cute and we have some of them framed as well as having sent them out on cards at Christmas - so not a bad result after all.

I added some hats to the original photo's and reused them for again the following year as cards and also my  Rugrat Rodeos Facebook page banner:

This year, our little Picasso is illustrating our 2013 Chrissy Cards.
 
Since she discovered saying "cheese" whenever a camera is pointed at her, and all her photos look like she's in the middle of doing a pooh, we've given up on taking natural laughing, smiling photos of her.

When she began decorating her letter to Santa this year, I fell in love with her illustrations - honestly, sometimes when she steals my ball point pens she really does her best work.

It's taken me some time to remove some of the background (in PowerPoint) and fill it with Christmas wrap (how I miss Photoshop). I also added some more colour in the 'Paint' program.

FWI: I am told the one on the left is a Lion wearing a tutu and lipstick. Do NOT ask me why there is a Lion in drag in a Christmas elf line-up, I am not the artist I have no clue!

After printing them in all in both English and a French version (for the other side of the family) I sat down in front of the TV one night with some of Little Pinkster's glitter-glue and coated the red and gold parts with glitter. I wish I could take a decent photo that shows up their wonderful glitteriness, but you'll have to take my word for it that they look even better all sparkly. :0)

This is the Christmas Angel she drew for inside the card: 

Earlier Miss Pink had raced into the office with a teeny tiny Rudolf Reindeer wearing a necklace of Christmas baubles.  She drawn and carefully cut it out it to glue on the back of her card for Nanna, (because her Nanna always gets a little extra something) but it was so cute I scanned it and added it to the design. 
everyone should get a Rudolf of their own!

Now, where store bought greeting cards normally have a bar-code, we have a teeny-tiny reindeer instead. :0)

These cards, although set up portrait on A4 sized card, when cut, end up as landscape cards.  It takes a bit of time and experimentation getting the size right, and working out how to feed the printer (ours is quite basic) so that they print correctly in double sided mode. I've made a template now that fits DL sized envelopes. 
I'm off to buy those now - some nice red shiny ones and a pile of stamps.