Author: sweater-maker

This was both our holiday card and an announcement that we were expecting a second child. In many ways this card was one of our most elaborate productions ever. While out and about at the local park with my son, I collected local grasses and then went home and handmade this nest. Once finished, I carried a ladder to a local park to get a photo of the nest high up in a tree. We then took a small family group photo and another photo of an egg and then combined them all into the nest.

Looking back from Summer, 2026: Once our second child was born, we were overwhelmed for a year or two and then our oldest started school. As we poured all our creative energies into giving our sons the best childhoods we could, we had to make some tough choices. One of them was dropping these holiday card art projects from our life. Instead, similar energies went into Valentine’s cards, birthday cards, Halloween costumes, volunteering at school etc. So, this nest card represents the end and beginning of two chapters in our lives. As our oldest is about to fly off to college, it feels like a major new chapter is about to start as well.

Our house was full of all the materials needed to keep our two-year old entertained all day. We even have cinnamon rolls for a nice treat if friends come over.

Jennie and me taking a break from holiday stress by taking a bath in cups of hot cocoa.

Production notes: This was one of our most successful jobs at matching color and lighting, because we took the photos of us at exactly the same time and place as the photos of the hot cocoa. Once we had the photos, this was one of the easier Photoshop images I worked on due to how perfectly the lighting matched.

This was our holiday card for 2006. At the time we lived within sight of the Grand Lake Theater.

Production Notes

This started as a photograph of the Grand Lake Theater area in full sunshine with no snow. I then found a tutorial online that showed how to create the illusion of snow within Photoshop. Incorporating Jennie and me into the scene required a lot of careful decision making about how to incorporate our feet so that they looked like they were part of the scene.

Just putting the last sprinkles on before the big holiday party.

Production Notes

We lived in a pretty small apartment when we made this card, so we struggled to find a good spot to take the photos of us from this elevated angle. Also, we had pretty poor lighting for our photos. Still, my proudest achievement with this one was creating the fake reflection under Jennie.

This started out as a fun idea. We took a photo of us wearing skin tight clothing and then Jennie added clothing made out of pieces of fabric.

As you can see in the photo, she did not just cut out flat pieces of fabric though for the skirt. She actually sewed tiny skirts so that in the final product there was a 3-d quality to the paper dolls.

This turned out to take so much longer than we imagined it would, mainly because I was unable to really help in the process. The end result was an amazing card that people loved. However, we both agreed that we would never do something like this again that required so much individual work for each card.