Happy New Year! I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season. 2019 has been off to a busy start! Before moving onto new projects, I want to share my custom letterpress Christmas cards with you.
These are my favorite personal Christmas cards to date, and I hope you enjoy them as well! For these cards, I started with the holly which I used to create a hanging garland framing the card. The addition of two songbirds perched in the corners of the garland helps capture the festivity of the holiday season while a modern script and sans serif font create a fresh greeting. Two holly sprigs frame the year to finish off the cards.
For these cards I chose a double-thick 100% cotton bright white paper for printing. The garland is printed in a forest green ink, and the songbirds are printed in a matte metallic gold to offset the green garland and red envelope.
When you’re printing two ink colors for letterpress, you print all the cards with one color to start. Then you need to clean the press and prepare the second color for printing. Once the second color and printing plate are ready, all the cards are run through the press again. The addition of one color essentially doubles the work involved to letterpress print!
Finally I used the holly and songbirds to create a custom pattern that I printed on the envelope liners. Custom envelope liners are such a special detail that I cannot pass up on my own projects and highly recommend them for yours as well!
Many thanks to Megan Robinson Photography who snapped our family photo at my brother and sister-in-law's wedding in Park City last October!
Thanks for reading along about my Christmas cards! Tell me in the comments below—did you send out holiday cards this year?!
Xo, Lou
