When I was a little girl my family got loads of Christmas cards. My mother always displayed them in the living room. We had venetian blinds and the cards would be slipped on them with the picture showing. We had windows across the front and side of the living room and by Christmas they were completely covered with beautiful cards from friends from all over.
This blog will include instructions on how to make your own Christmas cards. I decided that I was going to "try" to make my Christmas cards this year, even though I really don't send out many cards. You know how you have so much energy at the beginning of the holidays and as the days tick off it slowly fades. I think too that because we are "artist" we think that we are expected to do a Christmas card. After New Years I usually have forgotten about my lack of making a card. Even in December I will tell myself, just make it a New Years Card, but after that I just put it out of my mind.
I started out trying to decide what I wanted on the card and settled on a manger scene. The first thing I did was get my little manger scene out with the Mary, Joseph and Baby Jesus figures. I wanted the composition to be different so I placed them in various ways and photographed them. I had sat them on a damask pillow sham and in the picture you could see the swirls in the damask. I played with the picture in photoshop trying all different "artistic enhancements" until I got the photo the way I wanted it. Then I proceeded to paint it. The painting took various stages some I like and then some I didn't. I finally decided to photograph the painting and see if I could decide where to go with it. Well... that helped me a little. At this point though I had the photograph that I would use for the card. 
PowerPoint is my program of choice for getting things lined up and holding them where they need to be, but you can use any program. Word works fine too you just have to set different margins but you can insert pictures very easily with it too. I inserted my photo of my painting and also some text and arranged it so that I could get one card out of a letter size piece of paper. I used a photograph paper because I liked the glossy richness of color that the final product produces. With this method all of the sides visible on the card are the good side of photo paper, it prints everything on one side.
As you can see from the photo of the layout piece, after printing it is ready to fold. I first fold the letter size piece in half so that the picture is folded to the correct height. Then you just fold it in half side ways to make your card. When folding I use a bone (I think that is what they call it) to produce very tightly folded edges. Then all you have to do is put it in an envelope that I bought a box of called Invitation envelopes they are 5-1/2 Baronial - 4-3/8" X 5-3/4".
So now you can all run right over to the computer and start making your cards.... they don't have to be Christmas cards. I like this method because it is so hard to get your painting printed on the blank greeting cards exactly right. You can do this with any paper that is a little bit heavy.
Merry Christmas and Happy Hanakahua to you all.... Sally
