Memorial Card - Front Only

I do a lot of memorial cards, and 99% of the orders are due the same day or the next day because of the circumstances with the funerals.  I thought I would share this card I did recently because although I could have used photoshop to remove the background on the picture, I used a little trick in inDesign instead.

I created a clipping path using the pen tool & edited my anchor points to crop her out of the photo.  I placed it over the image of the clouds, and gave it a white drop shadow so it looked like she had an outer glow.  For the heart with her name, I just drew a heart, typed the text, then converted the text to curves (or outlines).  Then I subtracted it from the heart like a compound path.  This card really was simple, and the family just loved it.  They thought I spent hours on it, when in fact, the whole job only took me about 1/2 an hour.  This card has a 1/4 inch margin on all sides, I was able to get 2 cards out of 1 sheet of cardstock.  Had I done this design with bleeds, I would have had to charge more to print on oversized stock & cut down to the finish size.  I try to keep the costs down on memorial cards because I know how costly funerals can be, and if I can save the family on the printing, I will– even if it means sacrificing my paycheck a bit!