Sure you did all of the work and all of the cooking and all
of the cleaning and when the kids said they were going to the mall and you
heard the sound of the television go on you heaved a huge sigh of relief and
fell into the lounge chair or the sofa or the bed and haven’t moved since.
And why not? With all of the remains of yesterday’s
leftovers stuffed in the groaning fridge and with all of the relatives doing
nothing if they don’t want turkey they can damn well go out to the fast food
joint and buy their own. Your work is done.
No it isn’t.
Even if you have done all of your shopping,
hahahahahahahahahaha, sorry overcome by hysterical giggling, there’s the
wrapping, the mailing and oh yes, if you are going to mail, where are the
Christmas cards. (I know, I know, not all of you are folks who celebrate
Christmas and I respect your traditions and have nothing but open-minded joy
that you have your own paths to follow but for the sake of writing I am going
to say Christmas cause I think Yule-time holidays is too labored and listing
all of your seasonal celebrations is too lengthy and might keep me from harping
on what I want to harp on so just live with the Christmas Card thingy and when
you come to it read whatever you find more appropriate and we’ll just go on
from there.) Now where was I? Oh yes, the cards. (See I got around the whole
holiday thing and may just keep skipping over it until next year.)
It is at this time of the year that need is felt more keenly
than at any other time and some of us have endeavored to provide delight and
joy with cards which ooze saccharin and have wildly inappropriate messages or
have boring and traditional pictures originally taken when Ambrotype was the
chief method of developing film and haven’t been updated since or we went out
at the very last minute last year and bought a box of cards on the markdown
table at Wally World or we got whatever was leftover when everything went on
sale in January and haven’t actually looked at them since and so we don’t know
that they are copies of Currier and Ives prints from two centuries ago or more
leaves turning colors in New England and since it is the time of the year when
we have to do something or be put back in the same fix we were at this time
last year we are just going to send them out anyway.
Well that’s a load off.
But is that really the way you want people to think about
you and your art? Yes, your art cause if you aren’t using your own art for the
cards this year you should go and stand in the corner for the next five months
cause you have not only missed a chance to provide some new and diverting
viewing for the people who you send cards to, but you have lost a golden
opportunity to promote your own art by using it as the basis of your cards.
Now I can already hear the whining. Cards made on a home
style printer always look cheap and I wouldn’t want to put my art on a cheaply
made card and let everyone know that I am too cheap to spend the two bucks to
buy normal cards or cards made on a home printer always look like crap and my
art is better than that and I always go first class and would never cheapen my
art by using a home printer to make cards.
You really are trying to weasel out of this.
If you actually believe that cards made on a home printer
are too cheap looking for your art go to Staples or Vistaprint or Zazzle where
they have a 4 x 8 flat card fit for photo printing which they will print and
finish for you for five dollars.
Now, there’s no way out of this, five dollars is what you
spent on that latte and you’ve been buying one of those every time you have to
put on your big-person pants and leave the house cause you claim that without
the caffeine you couldn’t possible do all of the intensive shipping that you
have to do just to keep the family fed over the holidays and if you don’t feed
them they will go out and spend you into the poor house and there will be
nothing left to buy presents with and they will get nothing in their socks,
(Yes, it does say stockings but there are family members who if they are
wearing stockings then you have an all together different type of gift-giving
conundrum.) but lumps of coal. Yeah, right and I suppose you are one of the
nine percent which approves of Congress?
The fact is home printers do a wonderful job and it so
happens I have run off two versions of the same card so I could print it on two
different home printers neither of which cost over a hundred dollars and I
scanned them in on the flatbed I bought for ten dollars you remember I told you
to do that too and now I can show them to you and say with complete confidence
there is no way you can claim that these cards look the least bit
unprofessional or cheap and even if you send one to Pervy Uncle Earnie and he
uses it to mark his place in the December Hustler and it gets found there by
some grade-school child they will at least have the uplifting experience of seeing
good art along with THOSE pictures which you keep asking Earnie not to bring
when he comes for Thanksgiving dinner.
So, take a look at these.
They were created in Printshop but I could have done it in
free Scribus or Photoshop Elements or GIMP which is also free so there is an
easy and cheap way of designing your card and then you can print it on card
stock which you can get at Staples for $11.95 for a ream and you will then have
no excuse for the next five years cause you will not send out five hundred
cards in that time so what are you waiting for?
Making your own cards is an important method for getting
your art out where it can be seen and since you will give in to social pressure
and send out cards anyway why not use the art you so lovingly created?
Then remember if you do this every year in just a coupla
years you will have a stock set of cards which you can print off and bundle and
sell and save someone else from buying those leave turning cards by Currier and
Ives.
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