Anatomy of a custom holiday card

I just finished a fun custom holiday card project for one of my clients, and thought it would be fun to share the process we went through to create it.

Elizabeth, one of my clients from Tanglewood, was looking for a custom holiday card to send out to friends and family this year, and saw my $99 Custom Holiday Card design special in my fall newsletter.

We tossed around a few ideas, but she mentioned that a friend had done a really beautiful line drawing of their home, and maybe I could "Christmas it up" a bit to use on their custom holiday card.

Here is the original drawing, done by Rosemary Williams:




























I also requested a photo of Elizabeth's gorgeous house:





























I took the drawing into Photoshop, sampled colors from the photo, and "painted" the line drawing to mimic her home. I also added Christmas lights to the roofline and the sailboat in her window, some snowflakes falling through the air, and the little topiary trees on her porch.

After I was done "Christmasing up" the artwork, I created the custom holiday card layout in InDesign, adding the background, design elements and typography that matches the Tanglewood logo I created for them earlier this year.

Here is the final custom holiday card:

























































Thanks for letting me work on this project, Elizabeth, and I hope you and your family have a very happy holidays!

If anyone else is interested in taking advantage of my $99 Custom Holiday Card design special, contact me soon! The holidays will be here before you know it! Running short on time? A New Year's card can also work well. And we can also help you be eco-friendly with either a custom holiday card printed on 100% recycled paper (like Perceptivity Studio will be sending out this year) or even a custom e-card like I'm currently designing for Bacon Group Architecture.