Extreme Christmas Cards!
This page is the index to the funny handmade Christmas cards we have sent since 1989. Most cards have a 3D element. Over the years we have sent pop up cards, spinning cards, pull tab cards, and even an exploding card that flung confetti when it was opened.
Follow the links under the pictures to the individual pages about the cards.
(Note: links from the oldest cards are in the process of being restored after the loss of my server space.)
Round and round it goes.
Eat, drink, and be merry! For tomorrow you have to clean the junk off your computer.
2021: Halfway Normal Holiday
We thought Covid would be over by now.
We thought Covid would be over by now.
We were home for Christmas. You could count on that.
A Penny saved...is a dog who eats everything.
There might be spiders. Some of them bite.
2017 Cross My Heart!
Seven truths and five lies.2016 Middle Age Style
It's the Dark Ages again.2015 Town & Country
City, suburbs, pig farm. One child lives in the city, one spent the summer farming pigs, the parents are in the 'burbs.2014 Mixed Blessings
The nest didn't stay empty for long.2013 Empty Nest
It's very quiet at our house.2012 Silhouettes
Imagining the Mayan end of the world.
2011 Something Shiny!
Greetings from the easily distracted.
2010 Noel!
Home is wherever you find yourself. Daughter number one went off the college.
2008 Pine & Balsam
Combine a balsam pillow and a slice form tree. Smells like Christmas spirit! Tutorial for slice form Christmas tree here. 
2007 Messy Christmas
The hardest part of this card was figuring out how to put the tunnel cards together in a logical sequence, incorporate a greeting, and still have the whole thing thin enough to mail. Tutorial here.
1994 Santa's little helpers
Another obvious one, phew.
2006 Growing and changing
I was feeling melancholy. Several recipients remarked on the relative seriousness of this card. Tutorial for the Reverse Waterfall Card is here.2005 Global greeting
This was all about the snow globe animation in the slideshow. The card snow globe is exactly CD size. We printed the CD labels with the snow globe picture so the card looked the same with or without the slideshow CD in place.
2004 Sweets and nuts
The design was inspired by a collapsing wallet my grandmother gave me when I was little, and by my mother's and my favorite Fanny Farmer candy selection called "Nuts, Crisp, and Chewy."
2003 Turn, turn, turn
Oh, I love this one. It's based on a volvelle from one of Joan Irvine's books. There is a tutorial here.
2002 Do it yourself Christmas card
What happens when Mom gets a job? No one is home to make Christmas cards. The original concept was to use magnetic paper, but it was too expensive. I don't know how many people bothered to cut out the stickers. We had it on our refrigerator for ages.
Oh, I love this one. It's based on a volvelle from one of Joan Irvine's books. There is a tutorial here.
2002 Do it yourself Christmas card
What happens when Mom gets a job? No one is home to make Christmas cards. The original concept was to use magnetic paper, but it was too expensive. I don't know how many people bothered to cut out the stickers. We had it on our refrigerator for ages.
2001 Merry little Christmas
My first pop up card! How cool is it that you can find a paper model of your car? All the ads on the envelope are family jokes. Notice Mrs. Claus sleeping and the reindeer kids in the back fighting. The point, of course, was that the Claus family was experiencing our holiday marathon roadtrip while we got to relax and deliver presents.
My first pop up card! How cool is it that you can find a paper model of your car? All the ads on the envelope are family jokes. Notice Mrs. Claus sleeping and the reindeer kids in the back fighting. The point, of course, was that the Claus family was experiencing our holiday marathon roadtrip while we got to relax and deliver presents.
2000 Jacob's ladder
Another postage compromise. I would have liked to have made these with three or four flip panels, but the postage would have been a killer.
1999 Dream vacations
The joke here is that all these vacations are a DREAM. With two small children and no money, who goes anywhere? I was really proud of how the background patterns lined up across the page folds.
1998 Estate
The puns only work if you've heard of Sew News and Town and Country magazines, and the travel writer Arthur Frommer. Apparently these are not well known cultural icons.
1997 Wallet
Oh my gosh, another one that took forever. Every piece is a facsimile made with CorelDraw, not scanned. The challenge was to keep the whole thing flat enough to mail. There's an awesome tutorial for making your own "vintage" letter postcards in Photoshop at Can't Stop Making Things.
1996 Angels/devils
I like the unfolding tree inside.
1996 Angels/devils
I like the unfolding tree inside.
1995 Cherubs
This one holds a special place as the first computer generated card. It took forever. Corel's cut-and-paste was so primitive that pasted objects couldn't be moved once placed. It took dozens of tries to get the heads right. And, my computer was so slow that every paste took almost a minute to process.
1994 Santa's little helpers
Another obvious one, phew.
1993 Flakes
Finally, some people got this one. This was what we looked like when we traveled with all the baby stuff. We did confuse a few people who recognized our front door and wondered why we would be arriving, with all our vacation stuff, at our OWN house.
Finally, some people got this one. This was what we looked like when we traveled with all the baby stuff. We did confuse a few people who recognized our front door and wondered why we would be arriving, with all our vacation stuff, at our OWN house.
1992 Peace on earth
This was an obvious one.
1991 Whale watching
By this time our friends and family were starting to get the idea that there was a joke involved, lame as it might be.
By this time our friends and family were starting to get the idea that there was a joke involved, lame as it might be.
1990 Yellowstone snowstorm
So the next year we were a little more obvious. Except it wasn't obvious to anyone but us that we were standing in a snowstorm.
1989 Just a picture in someone's front yard
Many many years ago, after moving to a new apartment, we sent our first humorous Christmas card, with a picture of ourselves standing in front of an enormous McMansion. Someone else's McMansion. It was so deeply humorous that no one understood it.