Christmas is back again with all its traditions: family meals, compulsive shopping, Christmas carols everywhere and of course, greeting cards. Just like we did in 2007, this year we'd like to show you how to design and create your own personal Christmas greeting card in Photoshop with just a few simple steps. Then you can print as many copies as you need and show off your artistic skills!

1. Open a new document and fill it with black. Then apply a Gradient overlay with green, so that it looks similar to the image below.

2. Add a new layer and fill it with black too. Then lower down the Fill percentage to 0% and apply another Gradient overlay with the following settings.

3. Create a new layer and draw the silhouette of your tree.

4. Add a new layer on top of the silhouette one, choose the Custom Shape Tool, select the "star" shape and start filling in the tree's figure with stars of different sizes.

5. Make sure the top star on the tree is created on a separate layer, and add an Outer Glow effect to it with the default settings, so that it looks really shiny. You can now delete the silhouette layer.

6. While still using the Custom Shape Tool, select the snowflake shape (you've got three of them) and start adding them to your image. The trick is to use various sizes and shapes, and add them on different layers so that each layer can have a different level of opacity (I used 80%, 40% and 10%).

7. Finally, with the Custom Shape Tool still selected, choose the shape you see in the image below and add it to your image so that it goes around the main star.This shape should go on a new layer, just below the main star.

8. Apply a Gradient overlay to the shape you just created with the following settings:

9. Now you're free to add some more effects: a border, some shadow, maybe a text... Be creative, and happy holidays!