In this tutorial, you’ll learn how a Christmas card can be designed with Photoshop. You will learn, how to create Christmas ball, draw snowflakes, customize brushes etc. Let’s get started!

Final Image Preview

Create a new document (Ctrl+N) in Photoshop with the size 1920px by 1200px (RGB color mode) at a resolution of 72 pixels/inch. Using the Rectangle Tool (U), let’s represent a big rectangle reserved for background of the card we want to have.

For this rectangle we’ll use the Layer style > Gradient Overlay by clicking on this layer on the Layers’ panel to open the Layer Style dialog box.

Click in the color bar to open the Gradient Editor and set the color stops as shown. Click OK to close the Gradient Editor dialog box.

We’ve got the next background:

Create new layer and select Soft Round brush from Brush Tool (B).

We need to customize our brush in Brushes panel (F5), select the Brush Tip Shape. Click and drag any of the sliders to change the Size, the Hardness and brush Spacing as show. The Preview window displays the changed brushstroke.

Go to Shape Dynamics:

Also set the Scattering settings:

Change the Foreground color to #CE0000 and using our brush represent the snowflakes:

On the next new layer we’ll apply the earlier brush, but of bigger diameter and the same color to represent the background of the picture to be.

On the central part of the document we’ll insert the year 2010 using Horizontal Type tool (T). Select a font, size and color in the Character panel.

Click in the image and type the year. Press Enter to apply the text.

Set Fill to 40% for this layer and select Add a layer style icon from bottom part of the Layers panel and click to Outer Glow:

We’ve got the next effect:

Next step we’ll download a set of brushes for in Adobe Photoshop, named: Floral ornaments . Create a new layer and go to Brush Tool (B), select the next brushes from downloaded set.

Change the Foreground color to white and using brushes represent the next ornaments:

Create a new layer and select Soft Round brush used before and white color to use it on the picture’s edges:

Set the Fill to 60% for this layer.

Create a new layer, using here the same brush of white color to apply it again around the picture:

Choose now the Ellipse Tool (U) to draw a Christmas tree ball: