Imagine your Grandmother’s delight in receiving a personalized postcard from you that has you and your brother’s picture on it, or your wife’s smile when she sees the postcard you made from your honeymoon vacation photos. If it’s done right, sometimes a home made card means a whole lot more besides “I’m broke” or “I’m corny”, if it’s done right it can be a great to show that you really care.

To start off, we’ll need a family photo. I’m going to spice up the picture with a few modern effects that will give a final impression akin to a poster.

Using the Pen tool, I’m going to draw two shapes. One for the younger boy, and the other for the older.

Once I’ve drawn both shapes, I will use the blending options on both to add a stroke that’s 10px wide and has a 60% opacity. I will also change the blending modes on both layers to overlay

To wrap things up, I’m going to select just the background (the ocean and the sea) and use Filter > Artistic > Underpainting, with the Brush Size set to 40, the Texture Coverage at 16, the Texture set to Canvas, the Scaling at 200%, the Relief at 4, and the Light on top.

To wrap things up, I’ll add a couple of stock custom shapes, and type in my postcard text in white.