Illuminated Christmas Cards

Here's a glimpse of our Christmas cards this year. After reading an illuminated version of the Christmas Story (by Isabelle Brent) to the kids, I got the bright idea to teach them a little about the history of illuminated manuscripts and how they are made. Here's a great resource:

http://www.leavesofgold.org/learn/index.html

Then, it was a short jump to creating our own illuminated Christmas card...I found some simple, free nativity coloring style pages on the internet, printed them on artist's watercolor paper and then set the kiddos loose with watercolor paints. Mary was happy with her Crayola paints, but David got to delve into the world of tube paints and mixing colors on Mama's palette. Peter's Holy Spirit symbol was overcome with little boy spirit, so we switched to free-form painting for him. After allowing the paintings to dry completely (a day or two:-), the kiddos "illuminated" them with gold paint and gold and silver gel pens. Then I scanned and incorporated them into this tri-fold card---you are seeing the inside of the card when it's completely opened.