'Tis the season for making holiday cards. Once you start having kids holiday cards turn into the obligatory photo greeting cards. There are lots of great resources for creating your own cards online and it's become extremely easy to upload your own photos to create beautiful custom Holiday cards.

I love to draw and edit photos on the computer so I like creating my own custom cards. I usually print the cards out as traditional photo prints, however this year with so many easy options I might try a photo card. Creating our own Holiday cards has become something of a Lautenslager holiday tradition (each year occurring later and later and thus becoming increasingly stressful - the perfect holiday tradition!). We usually brainstorm with the kids around what kind of scene they would like to be in and then setup our photos in our family room. For this card, from last year, the kids wanted to be inside of a snow globe catching snowflakes. Separating the kids for the photo shoot and "reuniting" them in Photoshop keeps everyone happy and makes life significantly easier!

Once you have your photos the real fun begins. First I need to "cut out" the kids from the family room background in Photoshop.

Now I need to draw the snow globe. I do this either in Photoshop or Illustrator. Add the kids, some details and snow and we are almost done.

For the final step I compose the card, draw in the last bits of detail, adding shadows, some pine sprigs, a few snowflakes and a holiday greeting and we are done!

Time to get started on this year's card.

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