For the past three years, Three Rings has sent out a Christmas Card to every organisation using the system. Where we can, we like to use this opportunity to recognise the amazing work that’s being done by those volunteers we support. Of course the organisations using Three Rings do great work all the year round, but at Christmas – which most studies show can be a particularly tough time for those in distress – it’s amazing to reflect on how many volunteer take time out from their own time with friends and families to try and make life easier for people that have no-one else to turn to.
We tried to convey this with our Christmas card from last year, which showed a volunteer absorbed in a call even as Santa made his rounds, but this year we wanted to reflect the fact that there are people all around the world offering crucial support services, as well as having something that just looked a bit more fun!
So we got in touch with a fellow volunteer, who also happens to work as an artist, and gave her a few ideas about what we’d like to see. (If you like the final product, her name is Eleanor Reed, and she can be contacted by emailing eleanorhr[at]gmail.com – just replace that “[at]” with the “@” symbol). Here’s a few photographs showing how the cards made it to your door!
Our artist gets to work:
Sketches based on early ideas (and tempered by the size of a Christmas card!)
Once the sketches were done, it was time to fill in the background colour using Photoshop:
Things are starting to take shape behind the glare of the monitor
Thanks to the number of organisations now using Three Rings, we needed to get quite a lot of cards printed out…
Signing and addressing all of these took a while!
We had Paul, the company secretary, get the cards in the post (although he didn’t actually do them one-at-a-time):
Paul's still holding that box full of cards. Apparently it was quite heavy!
All in all, it probably took more effort than last year’s card – although a lot of that work was Eleanor’s! – but we’re really pleased with the result. So we thought we’d share it here, too:
Notice the fundraising robins! (As with all the photos in this post, click to see it bigger)
So from all of us here at Three Rings, have a very Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year!