Christmas Kicked My TRASH!

You know how, in October, those great do-it-yourself gifts from the heart sound like such a great idea? And then I never start them until a couple of weeks before Christmas. By the time Christmas rolls around I've stayed up for two nights straight and all my hair has been pulled in frustration!

Yep. That's what it was like this year.

Not to mention the rest of my life: new calling at church, singing a solo in sacrament meeting, having to be fair to both in-law families and remodeling the house...it's been one of THOSE months. So I'd like to apologize for my neglect. The only time I've spent online for the past...I can't even remember how long was playing World of Warcraft with my husband (that was his Christmas present--ME getting the game to play with him--more on that later I'm sure) because he's actually got a break from work and school and I'm enjoying it while I can.

But the muse hit the other night, and I've been working on this wordart pair ever since. I don't think these are finished. I'm not sure if I will ever be able to get what's in my head onto this screen though, so I finally said ENOUGH ALREADY! And I would be glad for suggestions! =) My dream is much more hand-drawn watercolor-ish. So I've decided I need a tablet. But I suppose you and I will both have to make do until that dream is fulfilled.

Download Here

For any out there that are curious about my Christmas project of hugeness (I'm just a wee bit proud and DYING to share), I will show you.

My family loves to play "Nertz." But we don't really like regular face cards so much, so we've picked up a habit of trying to find non-face cards. Whenever we go on vacation, we pick up a deck if we can find one (well, Mom buys a bunch anyways) and we get it in our stocking that Christmas. This year's was from our trip to Jamestown.

But what if I could make our very OWN decks of cards with pictures of us on them? So I researched, found a place online that would sell me the cardstock--glossy and pre-perforated and set to work. By that I mean, I ordered the paper, card boxes, and glossy protective spray. And then waited several months to actually do the hard part.

Setting up the template was fun--I have a secret passion for InDesign. Popping my little family's pictures in was great--I had all of them on my computer already. Deciding what to write as captions was surprisingly time consuming for me. I wanted this project to act as a mini scrapbook, and I agonized on making every caption and picture perfect.

Then came the others in my family--I didn't have digital pictures of my brother, sisters, parents, and me going way back--so I turned to my scanner. When I married my husband, I got one of those cool million-in-one printer, scanner, fax, copy, iron your shirt (I wish) machines. he got it fro really cheap on Ebay because it was a floor model. Unfortunately, we had never noticed that the scanner bed is pretty hashed. SO after several hours of hunting and scanning, we (my DH helped me so much) had to start over--fixing the stripe down the middle of the pictures would take longer than actually re-scanning. PLUS, I was working with a lot of color copies from my scrapbook, so I needed higher resolution than our printer could handle. Anyways, after millions of hours and a full all-nighter, I had my parents' and unmarried siblings' files done.

The printing of the files and getting my married sister's files finished (she was in on it, so she got to do her own =D) turned out to be a little stressful--I was planning on using my own printer, but it couldn't grip the glossy stock, so we had to take it to the professionals--who naturally don't keep all-nighter hours like I needed.

But it's okay. No worries. We got them done and they actually turned out pretty good! There were some that printed a little crooked, but we decided not to stress it. So there. Anyways, it was probably more fun seeing my family looking at all the pictures and re-living those memories than it was to actually PLAY with the cards! So I highly recommend the project--but I warn you it takes longer than you think it will!