Christmas Cards '09

or... "How I nearly lost my mind and sent e-cards this year."

Oh the saga. The process from card inception to dropping in the mailbox was fraught with headaches:

~ the design process began with thoughts of making a holiday photo card through one of the photo websites. Damn if those babies aren't pricey! At least the decent looking ones. So after I putzed with various layouts and photos and designs for over a week, I finally realized it wasn't worth the money and I could just make a photo holiday card myself.

~ so then, I designed my own photo card and made about 15 different prototypes before I finalized the design

~ and then the real debacles began... I ran out of white cardstock (trip #1 to Michaels); the cards didn't fit in the envelopes (trip #2); the envelopes were too see-through (trip #3); the new envelopes were too shiny to write on (trip #1 to Office Max for address labels); the address labels didn't print correctly (no trips, just a lot of cursing); I ran out of stamps (trip #1 to the Post Office). I think there were other shenanigans along the way but clearly I've blocked them.

Oh, I suppose you want to see the final product?


Here's the front. One of my favorite wedding photos cuz we look so genuinely happy. I used a corner punch to make those bubble patterns and then just slide the photo into the four corners. That way if anyone wants to take the picture out and save it, they don't need to keep the whole Christmas card itself. The white paper is backed with either green or red paper to make a small border (one of the debacles along the way resulted in me needing to trim the top and bottom of the card to make it fit in the envelopes).

And here's the back. (The card is just one solid piece, not a flip open thing.) The greeting was printed on white cardstock through our printer and the red design is a stamp. That's it. After all the headaches and debacles, the cards turned out fairly simple, but I like them.

P.S. I'm starting next year's cards in January.