We like to dress up around here, this is no secret. We take holidays seriously. Coming up with a vision and agreeing on it, is the
hardest part. Once we agree, then it’s finding the time to execute. You know it’s hella impossible for us to do anything simple. And
part of being an artist is the “I can’t rationalize spending money on that because I’m perfectly capable of making it myself” curse.
So I had to make/find our Elf attire. Which is fun for about the first 45 minutes and then I’m all, whhhhy did I think this was a
good idea?? Also, inevitably Adam and I start butting heads and cursing and the Christmas spirit is almost immediately thrown out
the freaking window.
Just before the holidays is a stressful time as everyone waits till the last minute to get me their image orders, plus people want a
quicker turn around for Christmas cards. So I’d find down time, any spare minutes and use them wisely. While images export, I’d
cut out the red embellishments for our necks. While DVD’s burned, I sewed elf shoes. Ya get the idea. Multitasking at its finest.
Most of the outfits we had or borrowed. Bought a couple hats and some suspenders and voila.
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I used red lipstick for the cheeks and Nico could NOT be trusted with that and a white shirt. I braided in pipecleaners to flip our
braids out in Cindy Lou Who fashion which you can’t even tell in the finished product!
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I used some adhesive spray to add the felt to our shirts which made it only semi permanent. Except for that one spot on my shirt
that looks like I had a band-aid on it for a week. Bummer..jpg)
Since people don’t really understand Adam’s magic behind the finished image, we thought we’d lay out the originals. I wrapped a
tissue box and puzzle, grabbed some ornaments off our trees, the garland off the railing and laid it all on top of a blanket on a
card table. Then Adam took a tight crop of the still life using studio lights so we could control the lighting..jpg)
With the same lighting each one of us did something cute in front of the chalkboard wall. Oh…and MY HUSBAND WORE MY
CLOTHES. Whaaa? That just doest seem right. The shorts are part of our passed around Mickey Mouse costume so I made
some red circles to cover the white dots.
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We originally wanted Nico to be jumping off something but we couldn’t get it to work. We also had to make sure we were looking
up at Nico for correct perspective and needed Nori to sit on something that could easily be replaced by an ornament..jpg)
Next Adam enhanced the still life and cut out each one of us from our original image. Once he shrunk and placed us he had
to create drop shadows by hand to make it look more legit. We also did some minor tweaking to each person to make our
outfits more perfect.
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Add some visual fluff and there you have it! (Which is still a lot more tweaking in photoshop to make it work perfectly. Adam
experimented with many different overlays before he was satisfied. The snow is separate and hand tweaked as well.) I would
imagine to the viewer it all looks so simple. I assure you, there were many a hrs spent making this finish result happen. So maybe
you should consider framing it.
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I wish we could send one to every friend and every family member. Even every client. But we have to draw the line somewhere or
else it would be upwards of a thousand dollar expense. Boo. If only we were millionaires! Also, because of the INSANE week we
just had, a dear friend came over and addressed all the cards. So if you normally get a card from us and didn’t, it’s because I didn’t
write the list or even check off to ensure they made it to the right mailboxes. In other words, if you didn’t get one, harass Laura
and Adam. :0 Heart, Melanie
