Monday, October 14, 2013

Make Art That Sells... Christmas in October!


Well it's that time again... the Christmas decorations are out nudging the Halloween decor in Target and I have yet to rake a single leaf! This week marked the beginning of part B of Lilla Rogers Make At that Sells e-course. I took part A and learned so much and have been looking forward to the topics in the second half, the first of which was the paper market. The assignment was to come up with 2 Christmas cards, focusing on candy and vintage ornaments... two of my favorite topics :). I have always been a big collector, and vintage Christmas is a major obsession...just check out my mantle. It's all there, from old cards, to hard plastic light-ups, to vintage Japanese ceramics like Holt Howard, Napco, etc. alongside Gurley candles, putz houses, chenille angels...and keep in mind, this is just my mantle, haha. So as you can see, I only needed to look so far as my attic for inspiration on this one!


The first design I worked on was the soldier and bear. Ive always noticed there are a lot of Christmas bands decorations, so I thought that could be a fun one. My main struggle with this design was the type treatment. Since I strayed a bit from my usual style to more geometric based figures, I thought the type should reflect that. Anyway, I ended up spending way too much time on this and literally have pages of fa la la la la la la la la la's! Can't tell you how many times I had to count the number of "la's!" It's hard to make the same two letters in repeat look interesting. 
For the second piece, which is the one I ended up submitting for review, I took part of the lyrics from one of my favorite Harry Connick Jr.'s songs. This one came easier to me overall as I knew from the start how I wanted the lettering to look and that I wanted the decorations to work off and around that as the central element. I've always loved elves, so I imagined them up to all sorts of mischief on a tree interacting with the ornaments. Note that I added a pipe smoker ;) I've decided that wherever possible, I will try to incorporate a pipe as my signature. Never smoked a thing in my life, but my dad occasionally used to smoke a pipe on weekends only, so this is my nod to him. I had a lot of fun working on this and although it is extremely busy, I hope you have fun looking at it! 


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