Open Door Card Design

An Original Card Design for Open House Invitations

Create a Card Design with Doors That Actually Open using Photoshop or PrintShop

First you need a photo of the doors you will use for your card.

One of my customers wanted an open house invitation using a photo of their front entrance. Problem was that the view looking through the front gates into the house is an entire glass wall overlooking a lake.

Wouldn't you like to have that problem?!.

Digital Trompe L'Oeil

These particular doors required some digital alterations before we could make an attractive card with them.

Trompe-l'oeil is French for "trick the eye". According to Wikipedia it is "an art technique involving extremely realistic imagery in order to create the optical illusion that the depicted objects really exist." .

You can do amazing trompe l'oeil using Photoshop..

Anyway, there is no way to shoot a photo from outside the gates straight into the light. So we decided to do some digital trompe l'oeil.

We shot the doors from inside with a view of the ugly unfinished stone wall across the street. Then we took some interior shots.

The rest is Photoshop magic. Open the photo of the gates.

Since it is the locked background layer, duplicate it so that you can alter it. With the Rectangular Marquee tool, outline one of the little squares in the iron gates and Delete.

Do this 130 times.

Choose an interior shot and open it. Click and Drag it into the picture of the gates.

In the Layers palette, move the interior shot below (behind) the gates. Nudge it around until you get an interior view through the gates that you like.

Of the 120-some guests who received this invitation, guess how many realized that the view through the front gates is not correct.

Not one. However, many did comment on the clever design of the invitation.

How to Make a Card with Doors that Open

The picture on the top of the page shows the finished cards I made for my friend's open house. This type of card is just perfect for an open house but is suitable for other occasions as well. You'll find another open door card design example here.

The doors proudly show off the new house. The fact that they actually open gives a very tactile welcome to the invited guests.

Inside is the invitation message or even an interior photo of the new house. In that case, the invitation text can be printed on the back of the open doors as in these examples.