In 2013, my advertising manager said the publisher wanted some full-page holiday greeting ads, and she allowed each of us to do one. I chose to do Thanksgiving, and even though it was the closest one, I wanted to challenge myself. I sketched the basic design on paper, scanned it and converted it to a vector drawing in Illustrator, where I was able to enhance the lines, add color and patterns, the text and The HDN logo.

I had a lot of fun doing this, and it was a great learning experience in using Illustrator. I was glad we were able to run it in color, too! Thankful my employer gives people opportunities to stretch their wings and see what they can do.