Case Study: "From Our Home to Yours" Holiday Cards 2009

Each year I design and fabricate our original holiday card in a limited edition of 100 for family and friends. I thought I'd share this year's as it was entirely based on the most luxurious paper I've ever worked with. Thick as white whipped cream, and as flexible, without damaging, as if felted wool. I used no printing of any kind, no pieces to assemble, no moving parts, no hand-cutting, nor the usual 100's of hours these tricks required in past years.

This year I hit upon a concept that utilized the sumptuous surface of Fabriano Medioevalis Stationery as the real special effect. I hired my friend and creative card making secret weapon, Mark Fullerton, and his trusty laser cutter to blast my folk-style, naive, little snowy village pop-up drawing, complete with pines and jolly snowman, where tiny foot prints wander from cottage to cottage to spill and spell out our cheerful message.

That was the idea anyway. After I sent Mark the Illustrator file for the laser to follow, he found that the strength required to blast through the Fabriano left violently charred bullet-hole looking results! Merry Christmas indeed. HA! Although, I suppose for many, this would have summed up the year pretty well!


After a couple late night brainstorming phone calls, Mark resolved the laser strength issues perfectly and sent the second photo above of the pleasing results. I love how Mark's innovation of how the art could be used by setting the laser strength variably, the first I've heard of such a trick, caused the dots to kiss into the paper to look just like little snowy footprints! Perfection! Better than I had originally imagined the card.

I folded up the details, which included opening each tiny, smiling door (FUN!), and added a little Jack Frost.

Mark and some of the recipients discovered the cards work well as cozy lantern art* as well if placed in front of glass covered votive candles or hung on a holiday tree in front of colored lights (*not to be placed near any open flame--paper--hello!?)

For further illustration of how I actually set about building a child-like drawing into an vector file, learned to work cleverly with various laser strengths for the textural effects, and how I finished off all the cards with a just-right icy frost and homey rubber stamp, are detailed in the captions here. Feel free to ask here or there about any details not covered. I'd be delighted!

Wishing you all the happiest of New Years. May 2010 bring lusciously playful paper to every tiny home!