Holidays with the Fam? There's a Nap for That

Here's hoping your holiday season rocks, even if you have to spend it with your family... :P

May you have many awesome reasons to nap in 2013!

Merry New Year

For my holiday card this year, I decided to do a new twist on my standard style. I Envisioned a sort of "Charlie Brown"/60s funky sort of look for this year's card. I originally designed it without any textures. But I just couldn't resist adding some to add to the watercolor effect. :)

Here's hoping your 2012 is indeed Merry and Bright!
(And if you haven't done your Holiday cards yet this year, you can purchase mine at my Zazzle store.)

Holiday Card 2010

Sorry about the lack of blog posts lately. I've been quite busy this past holiday season with personal and freelance projects. Some I can show ya now, some I can't... ;)

So I know this one is a bit late in coming, but I just had to show off my holiday card for 2010:

Usually I show sketches of the process I used to arrive at any given design solution. And I wish I could show you snapshots from my head, but this year's card was really simple and came about very organically. It was November and I was in the midst of several projects and realized I needed to prepare my holiday card. I looked at my previous year's cards and sketches to see what I had (and hadn't done).

I put everything aside and got caught up in the holiday buzz and rush and just kept the notion of "gotta get my card done" in the back of my head. Then I saw a great piece of type driven design and it struck me that was what I had yet to do for my holiday cards! I had be using the wish of peace, love, and hope in my cards from almost the very beginning, so I knew what it would say. And I knew the doves would play a role somehow, it wast a matter of tying them all together. I wish I could tell you exactly how I arrived at the bracket turned sideways as the solution, but I honestly don't remember, it just flowed from the few very simple sketches I did do.

I chose green as the color because it is calming and conveyed the sense of the holiday season without being too "Christmasy" Don't get me wrong, I love Christmas, but not everyone who's getting a card celebrates, so I wanted to be respectful. The final touch was a fantastic texture by my buddy Von, author of Crumble. Crackle. Burn. (Shameless plug: it's a fantastic texture resource for any designer. I might be biased since I know Von, but this book has been a boon to my design projects since I picked it up. End shameless plug...).

I even got brave this year and turned my card into a print, a greeting card, and an ornament over at my Zazzle shop so that others could send wishes of Peace, Hope, and Love too.

That's it for now, more to come soon, hope your 2011 is off to a great start!