Now that Halloween is over, everywhere is starting to get in the Christmas spirit. Admittedly, I’m a little bit of a grouch and think that maybe we should hold off until December before getting too excited, I might gulp a few Gingerbread flavoured beverages at my local coffee place before then!
Something that I think it’s acceptable to ponder are Christmas Cards. I do enjoy sending Christmas Cards, and I PROMISE myself that I’ll send cards early each year. I make sure I have enough ready to send, buy lots of stamps. Then it feels like I blink my eyes, and BOOM! It’s the last post before Christmas, and I’m scrawling in cards like I’m possessed.
This year will DEFINITELY be different.
DEFINITELY!
To spur me on somewhat, I’ve decided I’m going to try and make my own Christmas Cards this year. We’re quite a crafty family, my Mum and Sister like making their own cards for special occasions. They spend a lot of time lovingly cutting, sticking and crafting. I’m a little bit more high tech than that – I don’t think I can do the craft route is for me and my sausage fingers!
So – with that in mind, I’m going to design some Custom Christmas Cards in Adobe Illustrator and get them printed by Moo.com. There are LOADS of great places online to get cards printed, so obviously you can choose somewhere else. However Moo have made it easier by providing a template file to put your design into, so it will print correctly.
So the key is to have all the content you want in the ‘Safe’ area, the card will be cut in the ‘Trim’ area, and the ‘Bleed’ area is discarded.
First up, we need an image as a background. You could take a cheesy, staged, family picture, or find a pattern online. There are lots of ‘Royalty Free’ images around too. I’m going to use one of those!
You have to remember to not get anything important in the ‘Trim’ area. But that’s looking more like a Christmas Card now! The next thing is some writing – this signature font is perfect. Especially for a Christmas card!
It’s shaping up quite nicely, even if I do say so myself! I always struggle with fonts, there are literally millions of them – generally a script font will work best, especially on Christmas Cards. Script fonts are nice and swirly, which suits a classic Christmas Card design.
I feel that it might need a little something to make the text stand out a little, so – I’ll add a little drop-shadow to the text. It’s a very subtle change, but it makes the card look a little less flat. Can you see it?
Disclaimer – This post has been written in collaboration with Design Bundles.
That’s looking pretty much spot on now! Less than five minutes later, we’ve got a pretty good looking Christmas Card! Before we send it to print, it’s really important to switch off the guide layers in the template, otherwise, there will be random lines and text on the finished card! So, by turning them off, we get the finished product.
Right! Best get that bad boy printed, and HOPEFULLY, get them sent out in time for Christmas!
Disclaimer – This post has been written in collaboration with Design Bundles.
