The hard, hard life of the misunderstood artist

I meant to put up my Christmas tree this weekend, got the ornaments out, decided what furniture was going to go where to make room for it, and then on a whim I decided to make my first couple of Christmas cards instead, along with the photo-card I'm planning on sending my RL friends and relations. And now it's two days and a perfectly insane number of manhours later, and I have those cards done, but I'm gonna have to step up my schedule somehow, because otherwise there will be no Christmas tree at all this year, and also my Christmas cards will be going out somewhere around May 1 of 2008.

I mean, not to reveal any Card Spoilers to you lot, but here are some things I've learned in my efforts:

• Just because that goddamned holiday paper pack that cost way too much money has an entire page of clip-art alphanumeric to play with, it does not therefore follow that the letters and numbers will consistently match each other.



• I should have started training the dog to sit quietly on the fireplace hearth with a sign hanging around his neck, like, months ago; if I had, we might have prevented nervous breakdowns on both sides. (On the other hand, we might not. Saturday was a tough day.) We got there in the end, though.



• No matter how hard you wish for them to, no matter how many different ways on how many different configurations you try to print them, photos do not print well on regular cardstock.



• Because paper scraps increase at a rate approximately equal to the Fibonnacci number progression with each card I complete, I predict that by the end of the holiday season, I will be ded from paper drownding. I'll miss you all; I just want to say that while I still can.