Traditions....

 

 The Card....

Well, Dear Readers, it is The New Year, and some Traditions really should not be ignored! I refer to my personal "Tradition" of being so late with my "Christmas Card" that it is a wonder it is still called that! As I have mentioned a time or two, I have been drawing an annual "Christmas Card" now for more than forty years. When I was a child, the sending of "Christmas Cards" was quite a big deal and you could buy many many commercial options to send to friends and family. Because my family leans to the artistic side, we often made our own. My Father designed and had cards printed some years... I remember quite a few of those, and recently came across one of his designs. Because "four color printing" was so expensive, his designs were black and white. Remember, these were the days before photocopying was possible! (Can you remember that?) When I was a teenager we made some linoleum cuts and wood-block hand printed cards.... I can clearly remember some of them, but don't think any of the originals survived. It was great fun to set up the "printing" process and make prints that had to be hung to dry all over the house! And then one year in my early twenties I discovered there was a local shop that would "photocopy" your original artwork in black and white...! I made a drawing and had it copied and hand colored the drawings at home. In the above picture you can see the first twenty-five years of the "official" Christmas Cards I began when my (now ex) husband and I got together in 1983. I began innocently enough with just pen and ink drawings... my favorite medium at the time and easy to get "photocopied"! As is often the case with my projects... I didn't have a clue what I was starting... but it very quickly became a "tradition" especially with the addition of children to the picture. If you look closely at the bottom right corner of the above picture you will see color copies had entered the world! My cards became pen and ink and watercolor..... which meant they took twice as long to make.....! So this year's addition to the pile.... not as late as some years.... again is a bit dark....

                                      I hope you don't mind that it isn't very "Christmas-y".

And I hope you will understand that 

my Father's death last April has colored the year. 

It has been a challenge to "find Christmas" this year. 

But the card must happen anyway... 

so I am calling it an "honest" card....

 telling the story of this difficult year of sorrow.

The minis are in there... 

along with the Family events.... 

You might just have to look harder to find them!

So Thank you, Dear Readers,

 for your understanding and patience 

with my personal Tradition 

of being Late with the Christmas Card!