Classy Teal & Gold Ornaments Merry Christmas Photo Postcard

This was the design that I sent out to my family and friends this year. I had a lot of fun designing this postcard. I love how the picture of the child shows through the ornament, as if it is a part of it. That is my favourite part of this design. However, I also love the stars in the background, the elegant Merry Christmas text, and of course the swirl flowing down around the rolling ornaments.

Elegant Grey, Teal Blue, Beige Rock Texture Business Cards

One of the most unique images I have ever acquired is from a rock face on Lake Matininda in Blind River, Ontario.  It's exceptionally special as you can only get to this location by boat.  There are mountainous tree filled ledges and the odd tree growing out of the rock face.  I'm amazed that these trees can grow so big with so little soil.  The lake is amazingly blue and clean.  But my favourite part is the amazing rocks from that remote rock ledge.  They have incredible colour.  There are purple greys and teal blues, with bits of beige brown.  The colours swirl together to make an incredible, natural texture.  This great natural design makes the most amazing business cards that really stand out.  Here are a few of my favourites. Notice how the last one has different colours. It is the same image, but the colours have been altered to make a cool grunge effect.

Stylish Calling Cards - Grunge Overlay - How to make it

Here is a fun design.  I love the grunge effect.  It's stylish and modern and I love the randomness of it.

Here are a couple of examples some grunge style calling/business cards.So, how do you make a cool grunge effect?

First, you need a texture to draw from.  You can make your own by taking a picture of something with texture, such as a rock and importing it into a photo editing program, such as GIMP, which is free and extremely powerful.

Next, use the select by colour tool .
Choose a texturous part of your image and click.  If you are getting too much or too little selected, simply adjust the threshold accordingly.




.  Once you have selected the portion of the texture that you want, copy the selection (ctrl+c), open a new layer (the white button on the bottom left) and paste your selection on the copy (ctrl+p).  Then, click on the eye beside the original image to make it disappear.  To make your selection grayscale, click on colours, then desaturate.  You can also give your grunge layer a bit of transparency, so it blends into your background better (in the layers dialogue, make sure the grunge layer is selected, then move the opacity arrow to the left).

Wedding Planner Business Card - Black White Grey from Zazzle.com

Here's an elegant vintage style business card. It features beautiful swirled vines in grey tones. I love the vintage feel of this business card. It really works well with the elegant swirled text.

I think it's neat that you can take the exact same card, make a few minor changes and it completely changes the feel of the card. Here is another version of the same card, with a fun, whimsical feel.

Holiday & Christmas Photo Cards, Invitations, & Post Cards

Here is a nice selection of Christmas and Holiday cards from Pam's Designs.  You can see a large selection of her other cards at the Pam's Designs' Zazzle shop.  These designs are completely customizable and are shipped right to your door with a 100% satisfaction guarantee.  Simply swap out the templated information for your own and you are all set.  You can even move designs elements, change fonts and colours by clicking on the CUSTOMIZE IT button.

Holiday Party Invitation - Teal & Gold Ornaments from Zazzle.com

This design turned out really well. I love the scatter brushes. They make creating starry flourishes such a breeze. This design uses the 3d rotation to create the swirl on the ornaments and a radial gradient for the ornament. The sparkle on the ornaments was created by making a star and then screening a radial gradient over top of the star to make a glowing effect. I have to say, gradients are one of my favourite features. They make a design look so stunning compared to the same design with just solid colours.

Merry Christmas Family Photo Card - Snowflakes from Zazzle.com

Yay, I got a Today's Best Award on this design today. It's always so exciting when you get an award. This design has a glowing gold background with a teal ribbon and frame. It's accented with a swirled, whimsical snowflake that I drew in Illustrator. This is another Pam's Designs original.

It's too bad I didn't get my other design posted sooner. I really like it. It has elegant snowdrifts with trendy beveled swirls coming out from the drifts and the classy curved banner. The background has a flurry of beautiful snowflakes in the background and foreground.

Merry Christmas Family Photo Card Teal Snowflakes from Zazzle.com

A beautiful, whimsical children's photo card for the holiday season. With elegant swirls, teal and white ornate snowflakes, and beaded chains, this card will wow your family and friends.

Cute, Whimsical Merry Christmas Family Photo Card (2 photos) in blue and white by Pam's Designs

Merry Christmas Family Two Photo Card White Blue from Zazzle.com

I was quite pleased with how this design turned out. This one, I drew all the design elements in illustrator and made a few finishing touches in gimp. I'm starting to get the hang of illustrator. There's still a lot to learn, but it definitely has capabilities that gimp doesn't have. Although, I find that it doesn't always align my design elements very well. I find that a little frustrating.

Holiday Party Invitation - Gold & Red Ornaments from Zazzle.com

Happy Holiday's Christmas Invitation on Zazzle


Happy Holiday's Party Invitation by Pam's Designs

I had so much fun creating this design. It incorporated a ton of cool design tricks that I wasn't aware of. I discovered the rotate 3D feature in illustrator, which helped me to create the Christmas bulbs. It was really neat. You just take a paper, such as the disco ball paper and wrap it around the 3 dimensional sphere. Or in the case of the red bulb with the gold swirl design, I wrapped a red to black gradient around the sphere, then created another sphere with the gold swirl design and put it on top of the gradient sphere.

The stars were created with a splatter brush. I first created my star with the star tool, then made it into a splatter brush. Then, when you brush along a path, the stars spread all along your path. The same goes for the dotted lines.

I am by no means an expert with Illustrator, so I used Gimp to put my design together, I used gradients for the background with the Soft Light feature to get an array of gradient colours in different locations (you can see this more on some of my other designs in the holiday shoppe (Pam's Designs). The border was done by putting a swirled design paper overtop of a gold bilinear gradient and using some transparency. Then, I added noise to get a sparkle effect. One of my favourite features in Gimp is the Add Bevel feature, which pops up your design, giving it a three dimensional look. Then, I fuzzy select the frame and add a drop shadow (+12, +12) in black and (-12, -12) in white. Then I delete any parts of the shadow that don't belong and give them a bit more transparency to give that double layer effect on the inside of the frame. It's amazing how much time goes into a design. This was an all day adventure.

Real Estate Business Card - Elegant Gold Swirl from Zazzle.com

Classy, Elegant Realtor Business Card - Purchase Online
I'm really proud of this design. I drew my swirl design in illustrator and then used gimp for all the finishing touches. Illustrator makes an extremely high quality image, but I know how to use my gimp program really well, so that's why I love using it for design. You can really tell a high quality image, because when I use the bevel filter in Gimp, low quality images will make weird lines in the bevel, whereas this design is perfectly smooth.

I think this card is perfect for realtors, wedding planners, party planners, spas, hair stylists, nail technicians, fashion designers, high end clothing stores, boutiques, antique sales people, and anyone looking for a classy, stylish business card.

Pam's Designs Website

Well, I've finally launched my own Pam's Designs website.  I really like the fact that I can set up the webpage however I like and feature categories or products.  It's nice to have a spot to do my own thing.

Come check it out....www.pamsdesigns.ca.

Check out some of my holiday designs...