Letterpress: Christmas Cards 2024

I am so thrilled with how these Christmas Cards came out! I started sketching this at the beginning of the year but started wrapping it up in September. I looked back at all the places I traveled and tried to pick something representational from that place to fit into the illustration.

I did the whole thing by hand at first, sketching out the placement in a notebook. Then I scanned the image into illustrator to create the final monoline piece. There was still a lot of tweaking that happened on the computer and I filled in some gaps with tiny illustrations from activities, like biking & climbing.

I printed the final in red ink. Green trees felt too obvious. And I found these fun “air mail” like envelopes to include. In each card I sent, I also had little gift tags for my friends and family that they could use on presents.

To represent New Zealand, I had the tiny little hobbit hole and the BIG mountain for all the hiking I did. For Vancouver, I had the steam clock. Whistler was represented by the air tram car. Colombia is right at the top with it’s clock tower. For Mallorca, I had the sail boat and for the Florida keys, I kept the palm trees. It came together magically.

I hope to do more like it in the future, but I can’t imagine it coming together as well as this year’s card did.

Wishing you a happy holiday season. May it be merry & bright with travel in sight…