Here are a few of our other cards over the years.
In 1999 I did a Christmas letter written to the 12 Days of Chritmas only I substituted the 12 months of the year. It was the year we were married - a very busy year!
In 2001 Duke came to us as a rescue dog. He plopped down, exhausted and scared, under our bedroom window and the rest is history. By that time we already had a rescue fish, from the year before, named Hyper. Big Borther named him that because he would swim around the fish tank like a lightening rod and he ate all the live plants within a week of buying them. [they weren't meant to be fish-food]
(If you're wondering about
a rescue-fish, he was left behind in a nursery classroom by a teacher that unplugged the tank and went on a permanent leave of absence. Our maintenance man found him still alive amongst in the mucky water and brought him to the office in a water pitcher - I took him home and he became family.)
With that, our 2001 card was to the theme of Barney's
I love you. I no longer have the original file so I scanned a card.
Plenty of embossing and gluing. I thought I had learned my lesson about gluing...
Hyper was the "ball" that dances over the words of the song.
Our newsletter was on the final page. Since this is only 4.25 x 5.5, it was a short & sweet newsletter. and on the inside back cover was our greeting.
In 2002 we experienced a lot of stress in our lives so I did a quick postcard type card with velum over the top of a beach picture (not taken by me) with a smiple paper ribbon. We did manage to find the positive in a trying year including the fact that we changed Hyper's name to Sushi [and did he even know because he was a fish after all] I didn't have Photoshop back then so I punted. The copy below is one of my proofs.
Oh yeah, we did utilize that Top Ten list...as in a Dog's life. Here's the end of our Christmas letter - that actually went out in January of 2003.
By December 2003 Mike Myer's Cat in the Hat was out in theaters. I saw the perfect opportunity. This was my favorite card. It was newsletter and greeting card all in one. Reading through it still makes me smile, although I can see room for improvement with some of the lines. Isn't that always the case? I tried to turn this into a slide show or something but that didn't work out so if you want to read it, just click on the pictures to enlarge them.
See? I didn't learn my gluing lesson...
In 2004 I created an easy card, a fold over 8 1/2 x 11. I took pictures of Christmas bulbs and Christmas lights and put pictures of us as children at Christmas. It seemed easy, but I had my printing challenges. I didn't send it out to some fancy online printer, I did it all myself.
Here's the other cover. I printed some of each and sent them out. The Guy-I-Dig comes from a large family and didn't have any childhood pictures by the Christmas tree, so once again, I got to work in an editing program and "photo shopped" him in front of a tree.
Yes, that's a school picture.
You saw the 2005 card in yesterday's post; and just when I was about to throw in the towel and not send cards in 2006, I came up with this idea...
It's printed vertically on 8 1/2 x 11 in green and dark red. I love the earthy paper, too.
And no, it didn't cost more to mail.
There you go, a brief history of the Pierce Family Christmas Card extravaganza. I'm open to ideas for next year...
I think I should start working on them now.
Have a Merry Christmas!
