Painting Greeting Cards

Many years ago, I had picked up a teddy bear stamp and decided I was going to stamp my Christmas cards that year. After a very short attempt, I realized that it would be easier to paint the cards. I did like eight cards at that time and while the results were well below what I imagined, they came out pretty good considering that I had not painted in a few years. I skipped a couple years and then started painting cards again and have enjoyed it ever since.

These pictures are slightly out of focus, but you can see what the teddy bear cards looked like.

I give people at work some cards, mail others out, and give some to family. I tend to need two dozen cards for all my giving. The hardest part is to come up with an idea to paint.

The way I work, is to paint one color on all the cards. For example, I will paint a background color. When that dries (I am using acrylic paints), I then add the next color, and do this on all the cards at the same time until it is finished.
I have tried painting something with several brushes each of a different color on each card. That that turned out to be a chore. It is easier to do one color to all the cards at the same time, unless it is something like Christmas lights which are simply dots.



A birthday card for my brother. He liked metal working and was teaching himself how to weld.


Some Mother's day cards I did.



I painted a bunch of these duckling cards and my boss purchased them from me.



My the number of how many cards I can do is really limited to how much room I have to lay them out to dry in. One could do hundreds of cards if one had the space. I don't have space.

I always find that my second batch of cards is always better than the first. I am warmed up to the design and I figured out what I did wrong on the first one. I've figured out how do it better

As these cards are done quickly, the quality of the actual painting is not a professional artist's level, but I have had many people think they were commercially done cards.

With many of the cards, they look like children's paintings until I get deep in my painting. The teddy bear cards were horrible and I considered stopping seeral times, but continued till the painting crystalized.

First and second batches of cards painted in 2009. On the second batch I decided the stringers running down was not needed.

Year 2010 painted Christmas cards. The cornucopia was one that I thought I made a mistake with until I had them nearly done. I made the presents of the second batch look three dimensional.

The first batch of the Year 2011 Christmas cards. These were all given out within two days of being done.


These are the last batch of Christmas cards for 2011. There was a whole lot more I wanted to do to these to make them snap, but I attached them to the packages I had already wrapped and delivered the presents two hours before they were needed. It would have taken more than two hours to make them better.
There were four more cards not in this picture. With two, I set them in the wrong place and they were skipped for later steps. Two needed just a bit more signing and finishing work. I will finish them so I have something to show others later.

Because the Christmas cards are production made and done under pressure, they are never as good as I picture them. If I had done one as a finished painting, it would never reach those goals either.