Child Art Christmas Card

Showcase Your Child's Art on Your Christmas Card

Incorporate Your Budding Artist’s Work into a Memorable Card

What better way to encourage your children’s creativity than to share their work with friends and loved ones.

I can’t imagine many things that would delight a budding artist more than to see his or her art work "professionally" printed into a family Christmas card.

Here’s one we received from the Salvation Army.

Imagine how proud little Kayla, age 9, must be as her art work travels all over the world.

To make a contribution to the Salvation Army to support this and their many other charitable works, please click here.

Copyright - The Salvation Army

Child Art Christmas Card Materials

• 8 ½ by 11-inch card stock
• Card or graphic program such as PrintShop or Photoshop/Photoshop Elements - the screenshots here are from Photoshop CS3, though most graphic and card programs are quite similar, so you should have no problem following along.
• Child’s artwork in scanable size (most scanner beds will accept up to 8 ½ by 14-inch paper
• Scanner

Instructions

These instructions are for a 4 ¼ by 5 ½-inch card (when folded); so you will get two cards to each sheet of cardstock.

Select or have your child draw an appropriate rectangular picture.

Scan your child’s artwork at 300 dpi.

Resize to fit the 4 ¼ by 5 ½-inch card front. I made mine 3 inches high and left "Constrain Proportions" checked so that the picture would not be distorted.

Create new 8 ½ by 11 document at 300 psi. Since the artwork I’m using has landscape orientation, so does the new document.

Copy and Paste or Click and Drag the artwork onto the new document.

Setting up guidelines will help you to position the artwork.

The screenshot above shows the guideline setup for two landscape orientation cards (since we are making two cards from each sheet of cardstock).

Move the drawing into place on one of the card spaces.

If you would like a message on the card front, select a font and color, then type and position your message. If you like the overall look, copy the artwork and type to the other card space.

Then skip past the Optional Instructions to print your cards.

Optional Instructions

Add a Frame: You can often enhance the look of a work of art by putting it into a coordinating frame.

One easy way to do so is to draw a white rectangle with an outline (or stroke in Photoshop) in a color to coordinate with the picture. Place the rectangle in the layer directly under the artwork.

In the example, I’ve put a red stroke around the artwork and a larger white rectangle with green stroke below it.

Add a Background Paper: To add a little more life to the layout, scan in a pretty background paper, size it to fit the card front and layer it at the bottom of the card (beneath the artwork, frame and text).

I chose a pretty plaid digital paper (no scanning required!) from Scrap Girls designer Brandy Murry’s Holiday Lights collection.

Add an Inside Message: In Photoshop/Photoshop Elements you can hide all the work you have done so far by clicking on the little eyeballs in the Layers Palette.

Then create a new layer to type your inside message and position it. Copy it for the second card and move it into place.

This allows you to have the entire card - inside and outside - in one file.

Click on the related eyeballs to see and print what you want. Then click those off and the others on to print the reverse side of the card.

In other programs, you can either create a new file for the inside message or group the outside elements and move them off the design space, freeing the space up to create your message.

Save Your Work: Save your layout to a name that will allow you to easily find it again, for example, KellysXmasCard09.

Do not reduce the size or compress the file in case you should want to print out more copies. The minimum recommended resolution for printing is 300 psi.

Print the Cards: Print onto cardstock and cut the cards apart.