I start thinking about my holiday card around mid-summer. There are three stages to my process: design, engineering, production.
By September I’m usually already experimenting with paper and other materials. (If I don’t have a final design by early October I’m in trouble.) Once I have a design I like, I break it down into its most basic elements and record the size of each piece. Then, in almost assembly line fashion, each card is constructed.
I created my first card in 2001. Below are seven of the cards I’ve created since then. I don’t always remember to save one for myself, so there are quite a few missing.