One of my more popular pug Christmas card designs came about by accident a few years ago as I was learning how to use Photoshop.
I love the look of pugs, they are just adorable and they are also very popular so a few years ago I decided I really had to make a pug Christmas card for one of my Zazzle stores.
The design started with this photograph of a black pug puppy –
I uploaded the photo into Photoshop and using the eraser tool deleted the background. I then found a creative commons vector image of a Santa hat and put that onto the pug’s head.
When I uploaded the photo to Zazzle to put on a card I realized that it accentuated all of the mistakes I had made with erasing the background as you can see –
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The background appears very mottled instead of the pure white it was supposed to be. I had spent so much time that I could’ve cried, but then my daughter came in and saw the image and loved it, especially the mottled background! Instead of deleting it I published the card and waited to see what would happen.
I sold my first card within the first week which I thought was amazing, but I waited and waited to see if I would get a return – I got a re-order from the same person instead!
I’m so glad I didn’t delete it, my only wish now is that I could re-create the mottled looking background easily for some of my other designs! Over the past few years this card has continued to be a popular holiday card so the moral of the story is – even if your design isn’t as perfect as you wanted, it may be exactly what other people are looking for!
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