Custom Corner: An Italian Christmas

In our latest Custom Corner, we find out how Cherie worked with a special customer, and achieved a really stunning result – congratulations, Cherie!

Here’s the original card:

For the rest of the story, here’s Cherie:

_________________________

Recently I had the pleasure of collaborating with a customer in effort to create that perfect Holiday greeting card. Together we created a card that told a story, that was fun, original and full of special ‘elements’ while adding that personalized touch. This was an exciting project for me and I was very happy to be the co-designer. Helping a customer’s vision come to life is pretty awesome!

The customer that I was fortunate enough to work with was Mindy and I had a super fun time putting together a very impressive photo card that I must say really surprised me! I couldn’t get over the quality and clarity of the printing, very impressive! The theme of the card was perfect and the overall design worked out extremely well. I was sincerely quite impressed and delighted with the design outcome.

Mindy knew just what she wanted for her family’s Holiday card, an Italian vacation themed design using the family photos from that trip. Mindy suggested plenty of great ideas and was also open to my suggestions as well. Her plan was to create a journal type of card using as many photos on the card as we could fit, handwriting names and places on the photos and then adding a variety of Italian themed embellishments.

First I cropped the photos, maximized their color and clarity, added some photo frames and white borders, then arranged them so that they would all fit properly. I wanted them to look appealing and not too overcrowded. I originally suggested a textured fabric look background.

After presenting the first ‘sample’ idea to Mindy the wheels started turning and I’m sure the family had a ball coming up with the next phase of designing. It was suggested to use items such as the pasta, passport, stamps, pushpins and all sorts of neat Italian themed elements. In turn with that, I thought it would be neat to change the background to a more Italian themed paper look.

Now it was time to design the inside of the card which turned out superbly! We used the ‘collage’ type of design, the same as on the front of the card, for the top of the inside of the card. Mindy’s idea of an Italian restaurant menu on the bottom half of the inside of the card, to write about each family member and adding some light humor about it all, was perfezione! Now that is what I call a ‘personalized’ greeting card, and how endearing!

Receiving a photo card that shows the smiling faces of your family or friends while enjoying themselves either on vacation or in their everyday lives, with added tidbits of humor and personalized moments is a priceless gift. You just cannot help but smile with enjoyment, knowing that this card is a treasure. It’s a memory ‘keepsake’ and one that is indeed heartwarming, suitable for framing as well as for keeping for forever. I was happy to be a part of creating such a personalized gift.

_________________________

And here’s what Mindy had to say:

I always like to have some fun with our holiday card and glad I found Cherie to be up for the challenge.  She turned my wild ideas into reality.  Cherie was a dream to work with and has a real eye for perfection which is great since there were so many little elements in the design.  We’ve gotten rave reviews and even some of the GCU artists we’ve sent it to have asked “how did you do that?!” We literally have friends stopping us around town and sending us emails saying how much they enjoyed our card.”