HOLIDAY CARD : creative letterpress
⬆ A few of our Christmas / New Year + a couple of Valentine’s cards were done in our Holiday Card creative letterpress workshop.
MAKE YOUR HOLIDAY CARDS stand out in the crowd by designing and printing them via letterpress. You can access anything in Lead Graffiti's extensive collection of type, dingbats, borders, and themed wooden images. Whether you go classic or opt for clever, sending these cards will be a memorable experience for you and a keepsake for everyone on your mailing list. If you are in the off-season for holiday cards, how about a “thank you” card? You can never have enough of those.
For everyone who has said they'd like to quit Facebook or X, this allows you to make a stand. Sending cards (to young and old) is a friendly reminder of how great it is to get a little surprise in the mail. Checking email doesn't quite have the rush of opening an envelope.
Make it a party with old friends or join a group to make new ones and focus on a memorable holiday. Print up to 40 cards (envelopes will be included) in up to 2 colors, one-sided (front). Trimming or scoring the cards a day or two later may be necessary, given ink drying issues.
NOTE: Sometimes, we do variations of this workshop, and some details may change, but you’ll be notified.
Good to know
For 2 to 8 people aged 15 and better
$100 each for the postcard workshop, $140 each for the folding card workshop
8 hours or so, plus lunch
For your workshop, wear comfy shoes (our concrete floor is hard) and work clothes (you will get dirty). Dress for the weather—we are not air-conditioned, and in winter, the heat rises to the ceiling 20 feet up.
Lead Graffiti supplies all tools and materials. Be sure to bring questions, your camera, and a notebook to record your process.
Check the current workshop calendar or email us to request a date for your group.
Whether it's Christmas / New Year, Valentine’s Day, Cinco de Mayo, Thank you, or maybe Declaration of Acceptance cards, we're happy to help your group celebrate with a batch-of-cards workshop on request.
We almost always schedule these workshops because we want to make them for ourselves.
Declaration of Acceptance Card
Typically, around the first of the year, we do a version of this workshop where we print a postcard declaring our intention to accomplish something meaningful. The idea is to mail them to people who care that you follow through on such things. As it is embarrassing not to follow through, you have a bit of extra incentive.
You can see a reasonably thorough description of the “Declaration of Acceptance” idea here.
We’ve put together 3 YouTube videos for our Meander Book workshop, but the information can be quite useful to people who are designing for letterpress, especially when you are standing in the middle of our studio, without much, if any, experience on what we have, what you can use, and how you can use it.
Video 1 • Letterpress online : INTRODUCING our Meander Book project
Video 2 • Letterpress online : DESIGNING your Meander Book page w Illustrator
Video 3 • Letterpress online : LOCKING-UP your Meander Book page
A few favorites
Below are some samples to get your creative holiday wheels spinning. For clubs and similar groups we offer a postcard option that is gang printed (multiple cards printed on a single sheet at one time).
⬆ 2021 Valentine’s cards
⬆ 2017 holiday card built out of metal type dingbats.
⬆ Blue and silver coordinated this group's holiday cards.
⬆ The heart always wins this game.
⬆ Sometimes the simplest message is the most heartfelt.
⬆ This tannenbaum has lots of tchotchkes.
⬆Ray’s “Declaration of Acceptance” card in January 2018. Unfortunately, the idea was to get Stephen Hawking to write one of our books and he passed away 4 days after we printed it. We still need to go at those 3 steps leading up to it. We have an agreement for someone cool (to be announced later) to do that “B” step, so after a bit of a slow start we are back on track.