Since getting married and mailing out bjillions of save-the-dates, invitations, and thank-you cards to family and friends, it’s hard to imagine sending out just a few Christmas cards. This year, I decided to meet our holiday correspondence needs with the cost-effective, environmentally-friendly, yet time-intensive method of rubber-stamped postcards. As always, it’s much easier to shop than to get ‘em done, but Jon was a charming helper and we’re now 99% through. The following documentation will either make you utterly nauseous or bring out the cheerful glow of your inner elf.
1) General supplies and work space:
2) We tried to be as efficient as possible with the snowflake cut-outs and initial stamping:
3) Unknowingly, the silver postcards I got at The Paper Source were “coated”, which meant that the only way for the lovely blue ink to actually adhere was through embossing powder and heat. I did NOT expect to be embossing these, but since Jon helped in this department, we were able to work through 100 cards in just a couple hours. Not sure I would go this route again next year, but it was a crafty adventure. I have only embossed one other time in my life, and it was with a slightly more sophisticated heat source than this:
4) The final touch in projects like these is hunting for up-to-date addresses and then personalizing the fruits of our labor. The best part of postcards is that your messages can be incredibly brief, but still take up the bulk of your writing space. Fun times.
It’s always fun to display the cards we receive across the holiday season, though postcards aren’t exactly easy to display. Hopefully we’ll make it to the refrigerator doors of at least a few close friends and family, and they can be reminded with each kitchen visit that we love them!
Stay tuned for the story of boiling up a dozen pounds of decadent fudge… the handcrafted holiday continues!
