The evolution of personal Christmas Greetings

I grew up in an incredibly creative environment. I started drawing, painting and sculpting at nine years old. I create therefore I am.

In my mid-twenties, I decided to do my own personal Christmas cards to send to family and friends. Santa Claus was the inspiration for my first card.

My goal was to generate a new look, style and feel for each new card. The first cards were printed on full 8 1/2 x 11 sheets, 3 folded and sealed with a gold star.

There came a time when I realized my renaissance man attitude's had to end. I joined the digital age and got a computer. It was so easy to play around with the scanned images and print the custom cards.


My animal friends quickly became the stars of the show. They have been included in many of the cards that I have created. Many cards have the greeting "Wishing you the Peace, Hope and Love which is Christmas" that was originally written by my Mother, who also made her own personal Holiday cards.



Colored pencil, pen and ink, pencil and watercolors have been the mediums I chose for all my cards. Most of them were printed with an ink jet printer and some had photographs of the original art.

I used to purchase envelopes at stationary and office supply stores. In recent years, I found cheap bulk boxes of 30-60 cards and 'what do you know' they come with envelopes. It's a rather economical way to send out the cards. After all the envelope isn't as important as the greeting.



My wife and I have been traveling for a number of years and the cards have reflected some of our experiences and places we have visited. One of my cards, included a painting of a snow globe containing our first home. When in Florida, a beach scene was the background and our motorhome and Puppy were the greeters. A few years ago, we went to Disney World for Christmas and that card had Mickey Mouse hidden in the image. The challenge was to find out how many Mickey's appeared in the card.

A few years back I got all the extra cards from the past, put them into photo albums and gave them away as gifts. One of our very dear friends, displays the cards she has collected over the years every Holiday season as if they were Christmas decorations.

Fall is a miraculous time of year. It is the time to bring another Christmas card to life. Working with my wife on the concept of the image, writing the greeting and even coming up with a list of people to send our greeting to is always a great pleasure.

I am excited to share 12 of my favorite Christmas cards from over 30 years of creating cards for family and friends. Visit my web site artbyduddles.com to find my shop or go to:

https://www.redbubble.com/people/bdoodlin/shop?asc=u