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In SureThing, I first created a new label without using SmartDesigns, and set my background using the "Use Your Own Background" command.

For the background, I'm choosing a photograph that, at first glance, might appear kind of ordinary. It has no identifiable subjects, and falls under the category of "Photos I thought would look cool at the time, but turned out kind of boring when the film was developed and I looked at the prints" (if you're like me, you take LOTS of these types of photos). But don't despair, such photos can make great background images. This particular one was of a coral reef on the Big Island of Hawaii.

Note: I very purposefully chose a photo that did not contain people for my background. The reason is because I want it to be a true background and not the primary subject of the label.

This step is important. Family and friends love to see pictures of you and your loved ones, so don't deprive them of it! I'm going to use a close-up photo of our darling subjects, and place it in one of the four design areas.* It was taken at the same time and place as the background photo, and the relationship of the two is readily identifiable.

* The center hole of a CD presents some interesting challenges for a designer. It can be especially tricky when working with photographs of people. I approach the CD not as a single canvas with a hole in the center, but rather four separate design areas. I quite often create designs that don't adhere to this system, but when I want an ordinary photo to look cool, I find that placing it into one of the four areas and cropping roughly according to the colored regions generates good results.

For the main greeting, I selected a font that was bold, bouncy and happy, and I chose a light color to create as much contrast between the background image and the text as possible. If you read Pete's article in the previous issue of CDesign News, he presented some really good tips for placing text on complex background images and photos.

For accent, I selected a character from the freeware Christmas Dingbats font to give it that mistletoe-y feel. It fits conceptually (mistletoe at the top of the label), but it also helps fill out design area #1.

The above example uses a standard text block with centered text, but I could have also used some of the Text Effects, such as the Arched text at right.

However, this isn't the look I'm going for, and I have some other ideas for how to design the bottom area of my holiday label. Read on!

I designed this last effect to fill the #3 quadrant of my design area (which you could have also done with a text effect such as in the previous step), but I also wanted a way to display additional photographs on my label. I decided it would look neat if I created the appearance of Polaroid snapshots tossed haphazardly on the label, as they might appear on, say, a coffee table.

First I selected the photos to use and inserted them to my label using the Picture Tool. Then I scaled/cropped them all to the same size. You can make yours larger or smaller. The size isn't as important so much as that you scale them all to the same size.

Then I used the Rotate tool and rotated each image in such a way to give a random appearance. I overlapped a couple of the photos to enhance the randomness (but notice in a general way that they still complete the design quadrant, and more or less follow the contour of the CD).

For the coup-de-grace, I created a border around each photo to give the appearance of snapshots or Polaroids. To do this, I simply double-clicked the image to open its Properties dialog box, then clicked the "Set Border" button, selected a line style and set its color to something white-ish.

All of the snapshots were from my honeymoon, which tied in thematically with the rest of my holiday label design, but these could be pictures of your kids, pets, whatever.

I created my jewel case using elements from the CD label itself. The main photo, for instance, is the same one I placed in design area #2 of the CD, but not scaled down quite so much, and the fonts are the same, but in different colors. I added some clipart (the holly and ivy) in the upper right corner, and repeated my Polaroid snap shot effect.

The white area below the main photo would also be a good place to write your signatures, or a brief hand-written note to further personalize the gift.

When I put the whole thing together, I was surprised how good it worked as an actual holiday card. The jewel case sits perfectly on a mantle, but you could also take the insert out of the plastic case and use it as a standard card. Have fun with it! I certainly did. For some good ideas on what to include on your CD, be sure to check out Pete's article.

Here's wishing you a wonderful holiday season and a healthy, happy new year!

— Sean Cavanaugh