I always make my own Christmas cards, but after having Tala, I realized this year would be different. Nobody would care about my artistic ideas anymore—everyone just wants to see the baby!
I wanted to give the holiday photos my own unique style without going the standard “family posing under the Christmas tree” route. Inspired by this Elle UK spread featuring Michelle Williams and some cool hand-lettered script, I created my own set of hand-lettered Christmas cards using Tala’s black-and-white holiday photos.
I hope everyone I’ve sent them to has received them by now, so I can share them without spoiling the surprise!
I started out with a simple “Merry Christmas!” to warm up. To soften the stark black and white photos, I decided to keep the script fun, loopy and childlike, rather than ornate or fancy.
Plus, you know, I only have naptime to get this stuff done, so it can’t take very long.
Once I got going, I did a few variations using lines from Christmas carols with a star theme, such as this lyric from “O Holy Night.”
My favorites, though, are the cards I did with lyrics from a well-loved Filipino carol, “Gabing Payapa” (Peaceful Night). Gabing Payapa was the very first Filipino Christmas carol, and was written after the end of the Japanese occupation in World War II.
This song is extra special to me because the lyrics feature Tala’s name.
Ang gabi’y payapa, lahat ay tahimik
Pati mga tala sa bughaw na langit
The night is peaceful, all is quiet
Even the stars in the blue sky…
It’s my favorite song to sing to her as a lullaby. Seeing her fall asleep in my arms after I sing this to her is one of my most cherished moments as a mother. So that’s written into these Christmas cards too.
If you’d like to DIY these hand-lettered cards, it’s really easy! (And yes, that’s Rogue’s tail on my work-in-progress.) This is the process I followed:
Simply print a draft copy of your photo on regular printer paper. Tape a piece of tracing paper onto it (to prevent it from moving around) and try writing out a few different layouts using a 2B pencil. Explore different styles (all caps, skinny, and more) and have fun! Be sure to leave a few centimeters of white space between the photo and the text so it doesn’t look too cramped.
When you have a layout that you’re happy with, ink the letters with a black Uniball pen. Erase the pencil marks, scan the tracing paper and import your scan into Photoshop. Don’t worry, I know next to nothing about Photoshop so this next part is super easy.
Use the magic wand tool (set tolerance between 90-100) to select and delete all the whites. In the text effects menu, choose “Add Color Overlay” to color your text. Add the text as a layer on top of your original photo and merge the layers. Print on heavy white paper (I tore out sheets from an A4 sketch pad). And you’re done!
For a pop of color, I used fluorescent paper to make envelopes with the help of these handy printable envelope templates from Minieco. And of course, washi tape to seal the envelopes with a fun pattern.
Have you sent out your Christmas cards yet? If you attempt hand-lettered cards, please do show and tell!
Lovely cards! Merry Christmas to you and your family!
This is so creative! And SO cute! I think this is finally a DIY card idea I can do! I’ve never been great at hand written cards – for one my handwriting is awful – but I think a variation of this using fonts, will be a good way to start a Christmas card tradition! Thanks for the tutorial Deeps!