It is that season again, time to make the family holiday card! Last year I shared some ideas I used with previous cards, now let me tell you about the 2007 Hoehn Holiday card.

I was inspired by our new inkjet printers that came out earlier this year. You know the ones by now - they save up to 50% on ink cost and make prints that last. Those are two key features to someone like me that has a really long holiday card list! So, this post makes perfect sense to appear on TGIIF (Thank God its Inkjet Friday!).

I made a card that features a with a hidden message and bunch of photos that I have taken in recent years. Let me explain...

First, I came up with the idea of having a pull tab to reveal a message. Kind of like an interactive card with no batteries required. I started by sketching the idea on paper and arrived at a grid layout. I figured I could do it with two pieces of photo paper.

The finished size of the card is half of a standard 8-1/2x11 inch sheet. This fits into an A-12 envelope which is the largest size allowed for normal first-class postage. This also allowed me to gang-up the printing to get the most out of my ink and photo paper (both by Kodak of course!) ;-.

With a trusty X-Acto knife I went to town cutting the sections from the sheets.

Once I had the main grid I then made a series of cuts to that sheet as shown:

After those cuts were made I was able to "weave" the pull out section into the main sheet. I made the design so that the portion that was "hidden" contained a message. When you pull on the tab it reveals letters that spell the "P-E-A-C-E." Take a look here:

Cool, huh? Here are larger views of the two pieces: Grid and Pull. And for your viewing pleasure I put larger versions of each photo and their descriptions in a Gallery photo album. Enjoy.

Happy Holidays to you and yours and as the 2007 Hoehn Holiday Card says; "Peace."

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