Letterpress Christmas cards {Blogtoberfest day 8}

Christmas cards have been on my mind since August. Yes, August, which is crazy, because I am very much a “don’t show me Christmas products in shops until November” type of person, but I have a couple of wholesale opportunities and now is prime ordering time, so I had to be on top of things. On Friday, I had a collection slip in my mailbox, and it took all of the long weekend to work out exactly what that parcel would have contained – it finally hit me on Tuesday morning that it would be my letterpress plates for my Christmas cards! So yesterday, as the baby slept, I mixed up a batch of ink. I spread it out, lay out my equipment, and dialled into Skype. I listened to Sibylle talking about essential oils, and I made a start on printing up some pretty red letterpress Christmas cards. I think I may have broken her train of thought a couple of times when my brayer dropped off at the wrong point, or I added my ink guides upside down and left marks where marks should not have been left! A couple of “scratch prints” to get my ink levels right and then I was on a roll…until I ran out of paper stock. A new delivery had arrived a couple of days before, but needed trimming – problem being though, I was still on a Skype call, and my existing guillotine has been given it’s marching orders after 11 years of faithful service, and it’s replacement was up in the car. Thankfully I’d had enough to get the samples that I needed done, and I am thrilled with how the designs look on paper.

I’ve gone with three designs this year – one with a calligraphy style font paired with a rounded sans-serif, a repeating serif font design that wraps around the fold, and a typewriter font. For now I only have red samples printed but over the weekend I hope to have a play with some green options – I’m undecided whether to go for a deep teal, or a paler mint green, so will print up both and then decide. For now, the red cards are available for pre-order, to be shipped around the end of the month, in sets of five with your choice of co-ordinating envelopes.

In the shop:: calligraphy design one || we wish you a merry christmas || merry christmas design three

In Blogtoberfest news, day 8! More than 1/4 of the way there. I did have a small moment of “AH WHAT WAS I THINKING?” a couple of days back, but I took a deep breath and realised I can do it, as long as I keep up my momentum of Getting Stuff Done. This afternoon’s task is to sit down with my planner and work out exactly where my content gaps are and how I’m going to fill them. Are there any special requests of things you’ve seen on Instagram (or here, in WIP posts) that you would like an update on?