My youngest daughter, Susie, loves taking pictures. This is one of our front yard, with various footprints of the local wildlife, particularly deer. We have a few ancient apple trees just outside the boundary of this photo that they love to eat from, and they have even gleaned from the bird feeder a two yards from our kitchen window! I made this card for my son, Stephen, overseas with the Navy in Sicily. I thought it would be nice to have the combination of a photo by his younger sister and a card by his mom! Unfortunately, his birthday was yesterday and I forgot about mailing it out until this morning, sigh...

I originally wanted the deer image to be a "ghosty" image on the card. The result was disappointing, though I'm not 100% sure it's because the idea was flawed as that the execution of it; the footprints going through the face definitely warp the image.



I first made another copy of the image on separate piece of cardstock to put over the image, but then decided to print another photo and stamp it in brown. I then used a smaller Happy Birthday text than I had planned. I chalked in the image (not very visible here) to make the deer stand out a little more, without fully covering the snow; I still wanted at least a little of the "ghost" look originally sought for.