My Most Recent Creative Project

by Amy of Bumble Belly Designs

Every year, since the birth of my little boy, I have hand made a holiday card.  I really enjoy the creative possibilities and look forward to it every year.  I made some really complicated ones the first couple of years.  One year, I sent origami cranes in origami boxes along with the card.  My husband walked around the house with a concerned look for a few weeks as I sat hunched over the kitchen table folding and stamping and punching and gluing...

Each year, I never know what I will come up with and they have definitely been different each year.

This year we added a new family member when we adopted a sweet little dog the day after Thanksgiving.  This added a bit of anxiety to getting "the picture".  I wanted to do a silhouette this year, so we took individual profiles of my son and daughter and then a straight shot of "Snowy".   Using photoshop, I made them into silhouettes and placed them together into an oval shape and added random snowflakes to the surround.

These are the original shots I worked with...

    

and this is the final front of the card...

The inside photo was a bit more challenging.  We took it in about 5 minutes - that's about all the time we seem to get before a complete melt down and loss of attention.  There wasn't one photo that was great of everyone - this happens a lot with the two kids, never mind throwing a dog into the mix.  Our trick is to have the camera on a tripod so that it remains stationary. This means the background will be consistent in all the shots and if you take the photos in rapid succession you may be able to combine shots for the best result.  I had one shot that was great of the kids but the dog had his head down looking a bit disinterested.  I cloned a better shot of him into the good shot of the kids and it was easy because all the angles matched up from shot to shot as a result of the camera being stationary.

This is the result...

I would like to call every ones attention to the beautiful dress that my daughter wore for the picture.  It was made by Boston Handmade member All The Numbers.  I bought it at Boston Handmade Downtown on one of my shifts.  I tried to get my daughter to give me her DeeDee, but no luck, so the cute pocket on the front is covered a bit.  It's a great dress.  She loves it!