The Christmas Card

I got the Christmas cards in the mail late yesterday. Usually I get them out early in December. The past few years I have been trying to use photos for the cards. This year I did not have much of an idea of what I wanted to use. I was planning on taking a photo of my Christmas tree after it was up and decorated -- but when I tried to get a photo of it -- the whole thing -- I did not like what I was getting.

Then I had an idea about using the Lensbaby for the photo. After a little playing around with the placement of an ornament and the lights. I had a photo I kind of liked. As with many of my black and white images, I took the photo in color but planned all along to use the black and white version. The card I have is a silver embossed frame that you slip the photo into. I wanted to put a black and white photo into the silver frame.

Over the weekend I printed the photos I needed for the cards. As soon as I had printed them all, I got a great idea of what would have made the photo even better (isn't that always the way it goes!). The creative aperture kit from Lensbaby has a star aperture disk (it also has a heart disk and blanks to make you own). Sunday I had to take some photos using that disk -- even though I would not use it for the card -- I wanted to see what it would do with all of the light from the tree. The photo on the blog is the one I wish I had used for the cards.

All of the stars you see in the photo were created by the aperture disk. The little 'band' of stars that crosses the photo and goes behind the ornament is the bead garland. The reflections from the beads show up as stars when I use that disk.