Christmas cards

For the last two years, I have been really grateful (and at moments, stressed) to be asked to design the community Christmas card. The churches in this area send out one card together with all of the different services over the Christmas period included. For as long as I remember, it had the same design, and was, I think, photocopied onto printer paper. I was just ramping up to offer to do something about it when, in 2012, I was asked to design a card which would be properly printed and sent out to everyone in the area.

My little head nearly exploded.

Here's the design from 2012:

I desperately wanted to get away from European Mary and Joseph in a stable with a donkey. And a cutesy angel. And the littlest mouse. You know what I'm talking about. I also was dealing with making sure that I kept those churches who were quite keen on Mary happy, while also keeping those happy who were so keen to not be seen to be too keen on Mary, that they kind of ignored her. I should qualify this by saying that no-one raised this as a problem with me. I was just a bit paranoid.

Honestly, I'm still pretty pleased with it. I hope those who got it liked it too. I don't think I did a horrible job, as I was asked to do it again this last year:

 I am almost certain that my vision for this didn't entirely translate, and therefore I potentially baffled some people, and possibly started conversations in houses all over Manningtree with families asking each other why their local churches believed Bethlehem to be a patchwork of multi-coloured buildings of a startling wide range of architectural types.

It all started with this design, which was in turn heavily influenced by this one by Karsten Blem.

I am a patient crafter. I'm the girl who will sit for hours making something. However, my first attempt at making the first of those woven hearts nearly killed me. In retrospect, I think I had printed it wrong.

I was also busy being super influenced by the folk-art of Russia, particularly via Disney's 'Peter and the Wolf' from 1946.

No, I'm serious. If you want a feast for your eyes, just type 'traditional Russian art' into an image search. It's gorgeous.

It was done by doing a rough draft on Photoshop, then tracing over it by hand in pencil, and then pen and ink, then put back into Photoshop to add colour, using a palette drawn almost exclusively from Russian art. The top line of the quote was also done by hand then edited in PS. The silhouettes in the stable were added in PS as well, and were, in fact, the same as the year before. Just tiny.

In all, I'm pretty happy with it, but it may have ended up a little complicated visually, and the heart-shape got a little lost in the design.