Helen Chick
Despite — and because of — the fact that I am moving at the moment I managed to have my Christmas card designed early. The farewelling process associated with moving means that I gave out more cards than usual this year, and so this on-line version is probably not required. However, it has become a tradition (if the two previous occurrences in 2010 and 2009 can be said to establish such a habit), and so here we are again.
May you be blessed with a happy Christmas (whatever your beliefs!) and may the new year bring peace, joy, and the fulfilment of your goals. I have a bad feeling that in some of my physical cards I managed to wish people all the best for 2011, which is a nice but rather belated sentiment, and reflects the fact that it has been such a crazy year that I have no idea what year it actually is. I am looking forward to being at least partly settled in to my new abode by Christmas, and hope to have time to complete four of my Christmas traditions before then: put the Christmas tree back up (I think that in future it won’t be a permanent fixture in the loungeroom), sing through Handel’s Messiah (even if only to a recording), watch The Muppet Christmas Carol, and do the “hospital carolling gig” with TUMS.
This year’s card was created digitally using the program Illustrator. Since it is a very powerful program and I only use it once or twice a year, I still have only a feeble command of its basic operations, and I ran out of time to figure out how to do subtle things like graded shadows on the cloth. One day I’d like to master more of its possibilities, but that day is not likely to be any time soon. Expect similar clunkiness on next year’s card! At least this year I learned a bit more about “layers” so that each wise man was created separately, and then stacked according to who was in front and behind.
Finally, for those of you who are interested (and because I am an obsessive record-keeper and cross-referencer) I have an archive gallery of all my previous Christmas card designs.
Latest comments