Christmastime

I was over-the-top thrilled to do both my mother and my mother-in-law's Christmas cards this year (because who else would they pick to do them, really?). Both of them have such different tastes so it was fun to do two completely different looking cards. I had a blast doing them and I'm pretty sure I had two satisfied customers (thanks, Nance and Cath!).

Here are the final products. First, the Ruark family...

This card features a design from Envelopments, the amazing paper supplier I work with. My mom and I looked through their templates one day and this one stuck out to both of us. The top says 'Laughing All the Way', which pretty much describes our family in a nut shell. The artwork is straight from Envelopments line of hundreds of pieces that I have access to. And that picture? That's my family at my little brother's wedding this past summer. A perfect event to display on the card, I would say.

I loved that my mom stepped outside of the box for this one - green and orange don't tend to be your traditional Christmas colors, after all.  But anything goes for Christmas colors these days, so she went with the orange and green colors with the wonderfully sophisticated envelope liners (which I am more than in-love with). The card was a basic off-white layer mounted on a beautiful piece of metallic card stock. I was able to do the design using Adobe Illustrator (my new best friend).

And now let me introduce you to the Haddad family...

Z-cards are so great! I was really excited that my mother-in-law picked one out so I could work with it.  But the thing I love most are the pictures she chose - one from our great trip to NYC this past fall and another from a family picture contest that I won (though my sister-in-law might try to claim 50% of that prize :)).  But really, these z-cards are just a lot of fun and SO very simple to assemble. Basically, I just mounted the pictures and the white card stock and we were all set!

Having taken the time to make these cards, I decided last minute to do cards for Luke and I (who, I just realized, I don't even think I've taken the time to introduce in this blog yet...well, you'll see him in a minute :)).

I used my all time favorite colors and designed a very simple Christmas card, with a fun little note on the back (at least I thought it was fun...). Again, I used Adobe Illustrator to help design the back of the card and again, I need to state how much I love Adobe Illustrator.

So here's my honey and I. What a fun year we had together, with a fun Christmas card to match:

 

Looking forward to many more invitations in the New Year!