Homemade Holiday Cards
My grandparents and uncle live in South Korea, and I wanted to send them some nice handmade cards this year. My main obstacle was that I only have a B&W printer, so if I wanted to make something nice, I would have to create it myself. I thought about printing something out and painting/coloring it in, but I didn’t want the ugly black outlines to show through. So I took to the Internet for inspiration.
I knew I wanted the card to be more “Happy Holidays” than “Merry Christmas,” because it was meant to serve as a New Year’s card as well (and New Year’s is much bigger in East Asia than Christmas is). I found some cute designs of blue and purple snowflakes and thought I’d give that a shot, but when I drew them out on my practice paper, they looked awful. So bad. I tried to use a white-out pen on top to see if it would have a cool effect, which it did not. It only made it look clumpy and gross.
But luckily, I realized that ditching the blue and purple markers and ONLY using the white-out pen actually looked really classy! The only problem was, these cards were going to my grandparents. White on white? Not a great idea for 80+ year-old eyes. So I kept my white-out snowflakes on the backs of the cards and tried to come up with something new for the fronts.
I really liked the blue and purple color scheme still, so I decided to keep that around. I thought it best to keep the shapes simple, so I went for a wreath-like shape and a variety of dots. I lightly traced the bottom of a skin-care tub on the front of the cards, where I had printed a nicely lettered “happy holidays,” and I got to work with my markers.
Not to brag (but also totally to brag), the cards came out great:
When I’d finished with the outsides, I called my dad and asked him to help me translate my messages to Korean, and I hand-wrote them on the insides. This is the first year I’ve written the whole card in Korean! (That’s actually part of why I wanted to hand-write the messages; it’s more personal, of course, but it’s also proof that I actually did the writing in Korean, without the help of a computer. Even though I had my dad’s translation help.) I just started studying Korean this semester, and I wanted to finally write something to my grandparents in their native language. Hopefully soon I can fully understand what I’m writing to them…
These cards were sent out on the 12th, so hopefully they reach South Korea in time for Christmas!
In any case, if you are looking for inspiration for holiday cards or winter decorations, I really recommend the ‘white-out pen on white paper’ look. And happy holidays to you and yours! I hope everyone is staying safe and warm this year :-)
