Showing posts with label holiday cards. Show all posts
Showing posts with label holiday cards. Show all posts

Thursday, December 17, 2009

Custom Holiday Cards are Complete!





I've just finished making 200 custom holiday cards! Whew! Did I make any money? I don't think so but the way I look at it, it's 200 new people who will see my work. Look at it as an investment in marketing.

I knew I was offering a very sweet price but there are a few reasons for it.

  1. They were for my sisters.
  2. Like I stated before, an investment in marketing.
  3. I wasn't really sure how much it was going to cost when I priced them.
  4. It's my first holiday season in this business.
  5. At least it wasn't a total loss.
We all learn through doing and I'm hoping that next year will bring me and all that I know much success. Hey, it can't be as bad as 2009!



Saturday, December 12, 2009

Nordlund Holiday Card



I’ve been working on custom holiday cards for the Nordlund family and wanted to share some images with you. The most important thing when starting a new project is communicating with the client. If everyone is to be happy with the end result, you need to find out what their expectations are; color palette, layout ideas, likes/dislikes.
This family isn’t very religious and they have many friends who don’t celebrate Christmas. The first step was deciding that this would be more of a holiday card and can appeal to a larger audience. We choose a winter theme and stayed away from a typical Christmas color palette (red and green) instead choosing blues, purples and whites. I picked an incredible patterned paper by Heidi Grace and paired it with a deep purple (almost looks black in the photos).
They wanted to incorporate a photo of the kids as well which led me to creating the bracket. I die cut these with my new Sizzix Epic Six using a heavy silver metallic paper (thanks to Bramkamp Printing). This creates a nice landing spot for the photo to live. Setting it off to the left helps create interest in the layout and gives room for the holiday greeting. The holiday greeting was stamped using a Stampin’ Up stamp and their metallic ink in Platinum. I am so in love with this ink since it has a really metallic finish and is completely opaque. Plus it dries quickly! Happy Holidays was stamped onto a dark blue pearlescent paper (scraps/cut-offs from Poeme) and will be applied in the upper right corner using dimensional stickers (Hobby Lobby).
The client is providing the photos but I assisted in cropping the image and showing her how it would look on the finished card. Since the photos aren’t arriving until next week, I completed as much of the work in advance so I just trim the photos, stick them down and place the greeting.
I hope you enjoy this and I’d love to hear your comments! I’ll post pictures of the completed cards in a week or so.