Design a Christmas Card

This is a very strong graphic representation of this years broken Christmas due to the worldwide pandemic. The bauble is an optimistic metaphor for our broken Christmas still going ahead in the face of lockdown adversity. Your Christmas card is everything it’s cracked out to be and perfect for seeing out the end of everyones miserable, but stoically handled year.

Amongst all the nativity scenes entered into the Christmas card design challenge this was my favourite. The stained-glass fragments of your church window, depict all the Bethlehem attendees at the birth of Christ, on the day Christmas celebrations began some 2000 years ago. The three elongated window panels are purpose made for use as a religious Christmas card. The black background offsets the rich tapestry of colours and your perfectly lined up, gold-bevelled lettering, supports the full weight of your holy triptych.

This is a beautifully understated abstract Christmas card design with a high level of sophistication. The glimpse of the solitary red candle with its burning flame is a very strong, yet subtle central image. Set against the bokeh Christmas tree lights gives it a blurred seasonal background, dark enough to make your Yuletide message stand out. I’d certainly buy a set of these cards to send to my family and friends - especially with the charming spelling mistake.

This is a beautiful, painstakingly created Christmas card which took you many unsuccessful attempts to arrive at your desired, light-painted, Christmas tree effect. I very much appreciate that you weren’t tempted to use ready-made clip art for your sparkling fairy lights but magically crafted them in Photoshop. All your time, effort and relentlessness, to stick to the brief, has paid off with a very worthy top ten entry.

Where would Christmas cards be without our festive feathered friend? The robin is a symbol for Christmas because, legend tells us, he got his red breast protecting the baby Jesus from a stable fire. Unsurprisingly this is the most photographed subject entered into the challenge. I particularly like your rendition because, apart from being a good, sharp realistic photo of a snowy robin, you came up with an amusing seasonal tweet. This is definitely a Christmas card that would go down well on Twitter for bird loving twitchers.

This well-taken composition with immaculate lit baubles would be a strong top ten contender in any still life photo competition. By simply adding a colour-coordinated frame, a white key line and crisp lettering you’ve expertly managed to turn your photo into a very sophisticated card design. To my mind, the royaly-decorated, embossed baubles, represent the three king’s gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh presented to the baby Jesus. Your delightful entry, with it’s purple ribbons gently blowing in the night breeze, is the first Christmas card I’d want to display on my mantlepiece.

This old Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett TV sketch, turned into a visual pun, put a big smile on my face. For people (as if there were any left) not familiar with the joke it’s about a hardware shopkeeper’s confusion, mishearing a customer request ‘four candles’ instead of ‘fork handles’. The lighted candles give your Christmas card a seasonal touch and your clever photographic interpretation is in the best British tradition of pantomime double entendres.

Not many people would go to your extreme lengths, cost and perseverance to produce a specialised Christmas card photoshoot as you did. Not only did you buy a small, animal picnic table and have a giant, seasonal backdrop, specially printed but you waited patiently until a squirrel, a blue tit and a robin visited to take your magnificent ‘in situ’ shot. No photo manipulation for you - just the determination to get everything right in camera. To top it all you’ve added nice, clear, white italic lettering to sign off your design. I more than commend you for your successful, wholehearted effort, into throwing everything (but the kitchen sink) into this photo challenge.

This card is a seasonal reminder of past Christmas holidays when we didn’t have to worry about the danger of kissing a stranger. I love your simple use of a hanging sprig of green mistletoe accompanied by the same-coloured lettering. Traditionally the use of mistletoe goes back to the times of the ancient Druids. But this pandemic Christmas there’s never been a more relevant year when Brotherhood Of Man’s, 1976 Eurovision winning song, ‘Save Your Kisses For Me’ was more apt.