I have a penchant for creating really complicated Christmas cards.
This year I decided to print fifty photos onto strips of paper. Then slide those strips into a clear plastic ornament. Kinda crazy. But also kinda fun.
Here’s a preview of our Christmas card:
There are six strips of paper inside this ornament.
Sliding the strips of paper into the ornament is pretty easy. Trying to arrange all the strips of paper inside a plastic ornament can quite challenging! The opening to the ornament is less than one inch in diameter. Your fingers can’t fit in the hole to maneuver the paper. But you can slide the paper around with a pencil. When you have six strips of paper inside an ornament, if you try to move one strip, the others will move with it. OH BOY!
Instead of trying to finesse arrange each strip, I just haphazardly move the strips around inside the ornament until it looks good enough.
As I’m mushing around the strips, I think to myself, “boy, I’d really like to arrange the strips specifically, so certain images will appear.”
What if we just eliminate the plastic ornament altogether, and use JUST the paper strips? Whaaaaat? But how will the paper hold together? Simple? Plastic twist ties.
Here’s how the ornament looks made just of paper:
Yeah, you can’t see the plastic twist ties, because they are cleverly hidden with a little ornament hat. Hahaha. Someday I’ll write a detailed tutorial on how to do all of this. But in the meantime….
Which ornament do you like more?
These are only beta mockups of the Christmas card
- The Christmas tree will have lights. That’ll add to the festive character of the photo.
- The photos on the ornaments will be more curated. Right now, they are cool. I like the photos. But some of them repeat. And there are other photos I’d like to use that highlight bigger events from our 2018 year.
- I’ll add some sort of holiday greeting text on top of the tree. “Happy Holidays” or something.
- Better quality prints. The printouts that make up the ornament are done loose inkjet prints on my cheap home printer. The photos on the ornament look fuzzy. Once I curate the photos better, I’ll print them out at Walgreens for a nice sharp glossy look.
So now you have a special preview of our Christmas card! OOOOO! YOU ARE SPECIAL! I hope you like our card. If you’d like to get a card from us, please email me your postal address. I’ll be happy to send you one!