Letterpress Christmas Cards 2019

Every year I make letterpress Christmas cards to send to friends, family and clients. Each year, it allows me to experiment and test new ideas. I first came up with the idea for this card on a post it note at work. I was thinking about different wreath ideas and then came up with turning the whole card into a door. The first step was to lay out the door itself. This took the longest of the entire project. I had to trim a rule or two to get the shapes to line up like a classic door. Then I printed it as a blind deboss (without ink).

I wasn't sure I was going to find a perfect wreath, so originally I intended to watercolor a wreath on each door or get a new cut made. But upon looking through the studio where I teach, I found one that fit nicely inside the door I had already printed! Great luck to find such a perfect fitting cut.

I mixed up some teal ink instead of a hyper traditional green. I knew I wanted it to be a little different. I had to press it a little deeper to make it through the lines of the door that I had laid on first. The leaves came out really well and a lot of the original texture of the vintage cut made it through.

For the second color for the berries & the ribbon, I did another variation of a red for a non traditional color. Mixing this one up was fun because it reminded me a lot of the Cranberry Ginger Ales you see around the holidays.

The berries were a lot more difficult to print than the leaves. You can tell by looking at the cut itself that the details in the berries had worn away through the years. Likewise, trying to get it to register perfectly to the wreath was very hard. You could get half of it perfect and the other half wouldn't line up just right. But ya know, what wreath is perfect? And working with vintage materials on antique machines teaches you how to let go of perfection.

These cards were a lot of fun to print and I love the bright envelopes to go with them. I picked out two different styles of stamps to use when addressing. I can't wait for friends and family to receive them. I always sell some extra cards on Etsy so if you like one, or a few, you can find them here.