This Card’s for You

I’m not sure what started me making my own Christmas cards. Perhaps it was an attempt to personalize the cards or perhaps merely an attempt to stretch my teacher’s salary, but I do know I started making my own Christmas cards in 1974 with this card:

Having taken photography and calligraphy classes, it wasn’t too hard to make these cards. I was pretty proud of them, but years later I learned most people didn’t realize that I’d made the cards rather than buying them.

I continued to make photo greeting cards for several years but without a wife to insist we needed to send cards to people I didn’t really know, I didn’t send out cards for quite a while. Recently, though, after seeing a number of homemade cards in a craft store, I decided I wanted to try to start making my own cards again.

I’ve been doing so for several years now, as demonstrated by this card:

Though the photo can’t capture the three-dimensionality and texture that I love most about these cards, it does reflect the kinds of cards I’ve been making recently. In a sense, even these cards are mass-produced because I used three store-bought stamps on just the front of this card. Still, there’s enough originality involved that I consider them mine.’

Luckily, I don’t send out nearly as many cards as I used to because each card is an original, and it usually takes several hours to make one I can live with. I often use them to enclose money orders when I just can’t seem to come up with the right present for someone.

Sorry for the money.
I meant to give
a part of myself.