Letterpress: Christmas Cards 2017

Technically, I started these Christmas cards last year in December. In a work meeting, I began some doodling in pencil of the 12 Days of Christmas. I brought it home later that night and started playing with spacing and ink. Here are the results of that doodle session.

Fast forward to OCTOBER of this year and I took a picture of my doodle and brought it to my iPad. The iPad was amazing and really helped me center things and align them in clean ways. I wanted to use this design as a test to see how a drawing straight from my iPad would translate into a letterpress cut.

The answer? It translated beautifully.

I decided to print these on flat stock and send out "prints" as Christmas cards so people could frame them or use them in other ways! Here is a close up of the cut.

And the full cut locked up in the chase and ready to print on my platen press.

Once it was locked up, the printing went smooth and steady. I knocked out 100 or so in under an hour.

I sent them all out to friends in black envelopes. When I ran out of black though, I played with some other colors & styles. I used some color changing stamps from the eclipse earlier this year!

Here is a final shot of just the card. If you are interested in buying one, they are for sale on Etsy.