The holiday cards that we offer at the Gallery Collection are more than just cards…they are works of art. Each piece of art goes through a creative process from design to actual custom Christmas cards. These cards are some of the finest, high quality cards available. Below highlights the creative process for the very popular Design 157CW, Holiday Toy Shoppe Christmas Card. We’ll show you how this card went from an original design to a beautiful masterpiece.

The original sketch for Holiday Toy Shoppe is a black and white line drawing of what will eventually become a playful, vibrant, colorful card that brings back fond childhood memories of the holiday toy store.

The artwork appears framed here, showcasing what the final design may look like after production, encased in a lovely border with a joyful holiday sentiment.

And here is Design 157CW, Holiday Toy Shoppe Christmas Card in the complete and final form. The black and white line sketch has made it’s transformation into a colorful winter wonderland, complete with border and holiday wishes. The Creative Team at the Gallery Collection is responsible for this holiday magic, making sure that all of the artwork we use for our personalized Christmas cards is made to be beautiful enough to hang on your wall.

We have arrived at the third and final part of our “Making a Winning Doodle into a Dazzling Christmas Card Design” series. So far in Parts 1 and 2, we’ve gone through the process of scanning the image, cleaning the image up, changing the artwork to fill space, and separating the image to determine colors and finishing techniques. We’re almost done, and soon we’ll have a beautiful holiday card.

The creative team has gotten together to give critiques and advice on how they feel the design should look. At this point in the process the Creative Coordinator decides which colors and styles will be tested. There are many different colors of paper stock, and some of these different colored stocks will be tested with various inks or foils, depending on the design. The card is sent to production so the creative team has a chance to actually see all the different choices, and decide which will be the best-seller.

Here is a look at the design in the early process of separation to see which colors or foils would look best.

When the cards come back from production there are many different styles to choose from. This is an important step in the design process, as the Gallery Collection is always looking for the most visually appealing and creative Christmas cards. Here are some examples of the different foils and colors that were tested to determine the final appearance of our winning card.

Some of the different color combinations to choose from included buff cards with green foil, and white cards with multi-colored foil.

The Gallery Collection also offers a wide array of beautiful dark stock cards. Since there were so many options we just had to test them all!

The creative team will once again gather to review and discuss the different holiday cards. They will decide what works and what doesn’t work in terms of color, style and finishing. They will also decide if any revisions need to be made to the final design. With so many choices and options, this isn’t always an easy process. But in the end it’s worth it, as the Gallery Collection has some of the most visually stunning cards available.

After much discussion, a final design is chosen. It combines the beauty of Lauren’s winning artwork with the amazing skills of our creative team. Two amazing cards were made from this one beautiful design, and they will truly take your breath away!

Design #798CW - Holiday Tree Christmas Card

Design #730CW
Snowman Surprise
Christmas Card

Every design that graces the cover of our catalogs and is displayed on our website must adhere the high quality standards of the Gallery Collection. Changes are made to most designs, whether it’s sizing, color, or addition of foil. So whether the design has been submitted by one of our talented artists, or the design is a scholarship winning contest entry, they all go through the same process. This ensures that we always have the most beautiful, high quality greeting cards around.

In Part 1 of our “Making a Winning Doodle into a Dazzling Christmas Card Design” series we discussed the scanning process of the original artwork from the scholarship contest. Now we delve further into the process of creating a card.

The original artwork is given a Hi-Res scanning into our system, where a graphics program makes the image nice and crisp. This cleaning process makes the art suitable for reproduction. Once the image is set the production person, or Imager, gets to work.

The Imager has many different things to do at this point. Lauren’s artwork needed to be changed to fill space. The original piece was vertical, and the personalized Christmas cards that will feature this design will be both vertical and horizontal. The artwork is proportioned for a horizontal holiday card so that all the aspects of the original design are not lost.

This is Lauren’s artwork after it has been scanned, cleaned and revised.

The image then goes through a separation process. The Imager prepares the file, determining the different colors and finishing techniques to be used on this particular Christmas card design. There are many different options for each piece of art, including ink color choices, die-cutting, foil stamping and foil embossing.

The creative team will gather together and discuss these choices. Everyone will share their insights and give critiques and advice on how they feel the design should look. This creative input helps to make the final design a unique vision for the Gallery Collection and the Christmas card itself a thing of beauty.

The artwork that Lauren submitted to the scholarship contest is coming to fruition through the hard work and creative minds of the Imagers and everyone on the creative team. This design will become personalized holiday cards that Lauren, and everyone at the Gallery Collection, will be very proud of.

Coming up in Part 3, our final installment, we’ll share how the final decisions on colors, foils and the appearance of the card as a whole are made. You won’t want to miss this!

The process of creating our beautiful, personalized Christmas cards starts with an idea, and ends with a card that is also a work of art. But this doesn’t happen overnight. There are many steps between the start of the design process and the lovely finished product. Take design #864CX, Red Berry Greetings Holiday Card, for example. This stunning, richly embossed card began as a sketch, and turned into a masterpiece.

Here is the design concept sketch for what would eventually become one of our best sellers in 2009:

A second sketch shows the progression of the design to what was used for the actual card:

After the design was solidified, the creative team had to decide which color scheme they felt would fit the design best. There was no skimping when it came to this detail. The card was produced in a wide range of colors, in both the paper stock and the design itself. These different versions of the card were looked over meticulously until a decision was made on which holiday card design was the most eye-catching and attractive.

Some of the different colors there were to choose from included white cards with blue berries and buff cards with red berries:

The Gallery Collection offers a wide range of dark stock cards, which are always attention-getters. So, of course, we had to try out the design on our many different dark stock options. As you can see, the creative team had their work cut out for them:

With so many different options – all of them quite striking – deciding what color scheme would make the final cut was not easy. But in the end there was one combination that was so striking, so perfectly gorgeous, that it became the clear winner:

The combination of lustrous red and gold foil on the deep black matte background took everyone’s breath away. The creative team knew they had a winner. Red Berry Greetings became a proud part of our personalized holiday cards collection and one of our most popular sellers.

The Gallery Collection is constantly striving to bring you the most beautiful and high quality greeting cards available. So when the holiday season arrives and your Christmas cards start rolling in, you’ll know just how much effort went into achieving all the different designs and styles you see.