Christmas family photo sessions are always filled with warmth and love. This is an important part of archive of each family. I try to give my clients the maximum of successful photos from shooting in retouching. And the most successful turn into art cards, I do them in a slightly different, artistic processing.
The way of art retouch of the photo depends on the theme of the photo session. I plan in advance what color and mood I will have. For the "Angels" project (in the previous post) I did the retouch like a vintage Christmas card.
I always have many adjustment layers if I'm doing artwork:) I also use the plugins of Alien Skin Software and Nik Color Efex Pro in Photoshop sometimes.