How to publish your own Christmas card

How to publish your own Christmas card.

There is an obvious trend for people to send electronic greeting cards. And a 'Daily Telegraph' headline 10 years ago announced 'Christmas cards in terminal decline'. Perhaps in the same way that cash is also rumoured to be in decline? I find things are a bit more nuanced than this, with the idea that we will stop sending a cards altogether rather too black and white. Anyway, in our house we have always manufactured our own Christmas. We find that people send a card when we send them one. So, our living room is gaily decorated with over a 100 printed cards. The news on the street is that there will be more cards sent this year because of  'the lock down'.

The first step in creating your own card is taking the decision to do it. At the end of the day it needs a determination to just do it. The process seems to go on too long in our house as we too and froe ideas and miss last posting dates to far off places, like Australia.

Nowadays the cards are usually more run of the mill, in years gone by we have used craft skills to make batik cards, spray cards, decoupage and 3D printing. A couple of years I tried a holographic card but put that on the back burner when it became too complex a project.

So having imagined the theme, we need the graphics. The images to go on the card. These are usually borrowed off the internet, sometimes we use images from our phone cameras, though this year I actually bought an image from a stock art library. Canva would make a good starting point. This year I tried using a different desktop publishing app, Serif's Affinity Publisher and got as far as printing a draft. But a started again using Adobe Indesign, I just couldn't get into the groove with Publisher.

In the mean time I choose the envelopes. A few years ago we started using posh envelopes. Last year translucent blue ones; this year textured ones. Which reminds me to remind everyone, best choose a standard envelope size, rather than creating a card and then scratching your head trying to find an envelope to match. Often I use 'World of Envelopes' an online seller. Their latest web site is improved, they have a great range of envelopes... but tend to be expensive. This year I ordered 150 envelopes and they cost over £40.

The other element is the mailing list. We sit down as a family and go through the list, adding and deleting as appropriate. We always include one of those family newsletters, certainly we love getting them off other people.

We are printers nowadays so the cards will be printed in house. Sometimes we use specialist finishing processes. This year I wanted to go with a foiled card but that got an unenthusiastic response from the wife. One year we produced a shaped card. These processes will be sub contracted to one of our specialist finishers.

One of the trickest jobs is printing the address labels. One could write them by hand but the thought of hand writing over a 100 addresses sounds a bit time consuming.

My wife buys a pile of stamps, we stuff the envelopes, stick on the stamps; elastic bands around batches and drop them off in the letter box. Job done for a another year.

Next job... awaiting everyone else's cards.