traditional Christmas

Colorizing CHRISTMAS with Ready-to-Color Christmas Greeting Cards

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Colorable Christmas Cards in the Color the Carols BIG COMBO Christmas Gift SetCHRISTMAS IS BUSY

Christmas is coming. Oh, don’t we know it! One look at the calendar got me thinking about our family’s Christmas card list – not an email list, mind you, but an old fashioned list of names and addresses. This paper list brings together people we like to bless with a genuine paper Christmas card. That, in case you don’t know, is the kind of card that required a tree to sacrifice its life, so it’s a special thing.

It is astounding how quickly people ditched this tradition of sending paper cards in lieu of a generic email one-liner sent at the last possible moment. Yes, postage isn’t free (but you could trade one cup of Starbucks coffee this year for quite a few stamps). Yes, some places have unreliable postal services (and perhaps some of your greeting cards may not be delivered, but what is life without a wee bit of risk). No, you don’t have less time in the day than anyone else. Everyone everywhere is BUSY. (If you are not busy most of the time, take a moment to share your secret for extra hours in the day in the comment section below – I know we all need to find more time in the day.) Here is my challenge for you this Christmas: how about embracing a new thought this festive season?

Consider this idea: This year I will spare a few minutes to send a physical greeting card to someone I care about. Is that a crazy idea?

READY-TO-COLOR CHRISTMAS GREETING CARDS

For those creative folk who have a few extra minutes to invest in others, as well as in their own sense of well-being,  ready-to-color greeting cards are ideal. Buying a few packs of ready-to-color cards should definitely go on your “Christmas preparation list”. (Santa could use an efficient “list” person like you on his staff!)

Ready-to-color Christmas cards are a lot like traditional greeting cards. The big difference is that the color in the feature illustration is applied by you, and not by a printing press. You can use paint, markers, or pencils to add color to printed coloring cards. With digital coloring cards, you will use software to fill spaces in the digital card with color, and then you can print your finished work.

NEW CHRISTMAS DESIGNS

Recently, I was busy working on a new range of coloring card designs when a customer approached me to ask for Christmas versions of the cards. I had not initially planned to release any coloring Christmas cards this year, but the customer’s request got me thinking about how Christmas coloring cards could be more than just greeting cards. I imagined how a Christmas card coloring activity could provide hours of fun for families, friends, church groups and more. So I put aside my planned designs for a while, and improvised some Christmas designs for cards. Zisubu Artique now stocks sets of coloring Christmas cards.

PRINT AND COLOR GREETING CARDS

For those who like to do all their crafting from scratch, there are the “print and color” Christmas cards. You simply print the PDF card pages on cardstock – each page has two cards – and you are on your way to making hundreds of Christmas greeting cards (or just a few, if your Christmas list isn’t too long).

Not everyone likes to wrestle with their home printer – I know mine is rather temperamental about processing card stock. (Some days is plays nicely, and others it makes a big mess of the card projects I try to print.) If you don’t want to waste time loading cardstock one page at a time, printing, cutting the cards, going shopping for envelopes, and then FINALLY sitting down to relax with a coloring activity, the “ready to color” Christmas cards are perfect for you. The price of the “ready to color” cards includes all the craft work, so all that is left for you is to open your box of crayons and start coloring.

START A NEW TREND

Start a new trend in your family or business this year. Send Christmas cards that are colored by your family, your friends, or your business’ staff members. Or send an uncolored coloring card with a little note that encourages the recipient to sit back, relax, and enjoy coloring as they count down to Christmas Day.

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COLOR the CAROLS: music and art to celebrate Christmas

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Color the Carols COMBO by Eddie and Pearl LewisIt’s the first of October and an exciting day in the Lewis household. It’s RELEASE DAY for the  COLOR the CAROLS COMBO. This COMBO includes the adult-friendly coloring book COLOR the TRUMPET CAROLS and the instrumental Christmas CD UNADORNED TRUMPET CAROLS. The COMBO is the result of a joint effort by my super talented husband, Eddie Lewis, and myself.

Over recent years, our family has been noticing how ragged and worn-out people look as the countdown to Christmas progresses. The festive season has become an exhausting time which many people have grown to dread: the endless shopping for gifts, the over-consumption of unhealthy food, office parties, stressful family get-togethers, church productions, crazy traffic, malls crammed with people, more shopping, and so it continues. By the time Christmas Day arrives, many people just want to crawl into a dark corner behind the Christmas tree and sleep off a month of fatigue and irritation. Where has all the PEACE and JOY that is supposed to be associated with Christmas gone? The Christmas carols advertise this blissful state, yet for many a joyful, peaceful Christmas is just a distant memory from a childhood when things moved slower and life was simpler.

Can we recapture that Christmas joy and peace described in the Bible and the many carols? Can we experience it again this Christmas? Eddie and I set out to discover if this was possible. We wanted to create something that would give people the opportunity to shut out the noise and stress of the festive season for at least a little while each day. Our music and illustration skills came together in what we can best describe as a “Christmas experience”. That may sound a little strange, but that is what makes this product what it is: a soothing balm for weary souls. The combo is designed to immerse you in the Christmas story, by soaking your senses in the story. For a little time each day, as you use this COMBO, you can become part of the Christmas story, rejoicing with the angels and shepherds, and at peace with Joseph and Mary. For a little time each day, as you journey through the COMBO using music and the creative application of color, you can leave behind the craziness of the Christmas season, and soak yourself in the true meaning of Christmas.

The coloring book (COLOR the TRUMPET CAROLS) takes you through the Christmas story, from the prophecy of the coming of Jesus Christ to the fulfillment of the prophecy. Each full-page, hand-drawn illustration is accompanied by a page with the scripture which forms the basis for the drawing. This page also includes an extract from a well-known carol that relates to the scripture and the illustration. To deepen the experience of exploring this scene, this text page also includes reference to one or more (sometimes as many as six) carols from the UNADORNED TRUMPET CAROLS album. It is recommended that you play the CD as you color, and pay particular attention to the referenced carols for that page. (This text page is also framed and includes design elements from the accompanying main illustration, so there is plenty of opportunity to add color.)

There is no shortage of documentation available online to support coloring as a relaxing, stress-reducing activity. (If you want to read more about the impact of art therapy methods such as coloring on health, you can read this blog post.) Music has similar powerful health benefits. By combining music and art (to take advantage of the health and well-being benefits of both streams of creativity) with the uplifting effects of scripture, the  COLOR the CAROLS COMBO offers a unique Christmas-focused experience. When you open the book, turn on the music, and settle down to meditate on one moment in the Christmas story, you choose something better, something more joyful and more peaceful, than the rush and the stress of today’s Christmas season where it is easy to forget WHY we are celebrating. Treat yourself to a worthwhile Christmas experience this year – and then share the joy and peace with others.

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