A Christmas Card in the making

I wanted to share on how I made our Christmas card this year.  All of the steps and what went into the making of the card.  I hope you enjoy what I did.  

I stared with, of course our fur babies.  Eldon and I went on a little adventure to buy the bandannas for Jewel and Libby.   I had an idea for them to be tugging and playing outside, now some of the snapshots we took might have worked but this one just caught my eye.  Eldon there on the edge with FOOD !!!!! The wonder thing that makes these babies pay attention, especially Jewel, the one with the stouter legs.   Let's not tell her though, her heart is bigger than she is and she thinks she is a really big watch dog. 

I loved it and choose to flip the image in Photoshop.   I then got the rest of the images together and went to Painter.  What a program.   Now I know you may be thinking, oh this is a program and you just push a key and tadaaaa it is painted. Well, I guess you could do that, but I was a traditional artist for years before becoming a professional photographer, now retired and finding what I want to do when I grow up.   You choose your media you wish to work with and I usually choose pastels and off you go, just paint to your little hearts content.  Stroke by stoke.  Best thing about it, you can just hit delete and start over.  No messing of the fingers or clothing, but I do love that also, but that is another story. 

Jewel and Libby all decked out with bandannas and I added the garland with the 'fairy dust' around it and on the tree.  Our tree by the way.

I also used a wonderful Santa that Tim O'Neil furnished us.  He is a great Santa.  Perfect for the fur babies to wish and hope that they are on the good fur baby list.   I bet they are and will get lots of rawhide treats during the year. 

 Here is the before and after Santa, I loved painting this ole guy.  I lowered the opacity so he would look like a dream or thought for the fur babies. 


I then added the window, which I drew in and added this winter painting that Karen Bonaker furnished the photo for us.  

The before and after of the snow scene, can't you just hear the sleigh bells here and the quietness of the snow and the crunching underfoot when you walk ?

Here is the final card, I took all the final images I painted and put them together and then in Photoshop filled in the background with red, added some stokes of color around the edges and flatten it all and sent it to my Miller's Lab to print it.  I also added inside a sentiment and of course on the back who it was created by.   I had it printed on linen paper which gave it a very pretty look.

There you go a quick look on how I created our Christmas card this year.  Thanks for stopping by and seeing what is going on in my world.   Looking forward to 2011 and an art adventure.