Make your own Vintage Custom Christmas Card - Free Printable

I have several personalized Christmas cards from the 1940's-1960's. I love seeing the pictures chosen and the old vintage illustrations, many often handmade. I'm guessing that people bought them from a local photography studio. Some, of course, have clip art and were bought as a template from the photo stores or mail order companies.

I thought it would be fun to make these available to you to use to make your own "vintage" custom Christmas card (these are all actually flats). You could print them and send them or you could just use it as a web post or ecard.

This first card is from 1951 and it has spots for three pictures. It could be a family or kids or pets or a trio of friends. I love how sweetly the boy in this photo is holding his orange cat.

The first thing to do is to download the template. Make sure you download the original size.

Then crop the images you need in a squarish size and fit in squares (the size is roughly 300x300 in 300 dpi).  Then change your images to black and white, add a little sepia and a little noise so it matches the card more. Or you could leave them without the changes, it's up to you. 

I did a couple of samples to see how it looks. The first TV show I thought of that had three people is the show Ben and Kate. It's a new show this fall and I like it a lot. It's about a sister and brother living together and raising her daughter. So I did one for them. Then I did one of just pets because they're cute.

                                

The next one I did was meant for an image of a house or family picture. I like the idea of having an image of a house (of course, I would). Especially if you're sending it to people who know and miss that house or if you recently moved.

This card was sent in 1958 and there was a long message on the back saying the house had been in the family since 1884.  This card has deckle edges. You might want to crop them out and reproduce them on the computer or with fancy edge scissors. As long as the image you use is covering the white square it'll look good. That image size is 823x835 300 dpi. But, of course it could be a bit bigger.

The original size image is here.

Here is a sample that I did with an image that a friend recently posted of their new home. I did all the adjustments to this as with the other one.

I spent probably too much time on this, but you know, sometimes you want to do something just to do it. I hope that some of you might find some use for it. If you use it, I'd love to see what you do. 

Happy Holiday Season!

a great find on the coast

While I was at the coast a couple weeks ago I got to visit a place recommended by my beach house roomies, a recycle center called Cart'm.

Cart'm is like Scrap in Portland, if you are familiar with it. It is a place to recycle all kinds of things and they have a resale store with some great stuff in it.


Outside is a little garden with neat outdoor art made from recycled products. It was fun to see all the neat stuff they had come up with.

A substantial stash of a vintage magazine were found in the store. The magazine is called Ideals. It is a strange magazine that was in print for 50 years. It was filled with all kinds of illustration art, mostly poetry and no ads. It was Christian and there are lots of Christian images and poems, but for example, the Easter issues still had lots of easter Bunny stuff, too. It used lots of reader contributions.


The illustrations are amazing. The colors are great, so saturated and rich and the styles are great, they remind me a lot of stuff I saw as a kid. They are awesome for collage. It is hard to cut into them, but I will, when I finally get the focus and space to do those collages I keep talking about.

Anyway, Ideals Magazine seem to be pretty available on Ebay. The issues came out with themes. I got a bunch of Christmas ones that are great. Here are some images from the Easter ones.

More images on my flickr account.

I also got these awesome slide storage cases while I was there. I love the style of these. The compartments flip out to access the slides. I don't know if I ill actually use these for slides, but I might. I certainly have inherited enough of them.



So, yeah, check out Ideals magazines if you come across them and Cart'm when you are near Manzanita, Oregon. Good stuff.

vintage stationary - a freebie!

Go here to Download and print

I found this today in my stationary stash and decided I had hoarded it too long, it was time to share.

These write & fold stationary things were popular in the 70's and I had tons then and a bit of a collection now.

You would write on the other side and then fold up the top and bottom on the lines and afffix a seal to hold it together and then address on the front.

This one, as you can tell, is a winner. The whole thing is so great. Feel free to download the large size from the flickr photos and use for your personal use.

I guess technically this should be a Cedar Chest post, but I didn't want you all to miss it.

Happy letter writing!

if you're bored, you're boring

yanked from Walyou, found while looking for something esle.

waiting

print by porterness paper goods.

The spring so far has been so fickle. Rain and hail and sunshine often all within a couple of hours. I like the surprise of it. For some reason Spring always makes me think of Christopher Robin running around the 100 Acres Woods with rosy cheeks and dearest friends, making sure to stop in the cozy home of Pooh for some tea and honey.

Although today is grey and rainy, reports are that it will be in the 80's this weekend. It will be nice to see the sun, although most of my plans so far involve being indoors.

I am heading off the Annual Webfooters Vintage Postcard, Photo and Ephemera Sale this weekend. Looking through boxes of old papers and photos is something I enjoy doing. It is crazy all the stuff that you can find. I am always overwhelmed by how these little paper items, meant to be temporary, have lasted over 100 years.

Being at a postcard sale like this isn't much different from a zine sympoisum or a record swap - both things I have been to many times. It is the kind of event I love - one room filled with lots of people who all love the same things. They show what they found, they talk about their interests and people are happy to share info with each other.

Speaking of zines, also on the list this weekend is to work on my page for the Entry Point compilation zine that Nicole Introvert is putting togethre for International Zine Month - which is July in case you were wondering. The idea is to write about how you got into zines. I am having trouble getting mine to fit on one page. You can find out more here.

I also only got halfway through my list of zine things to do last weekend. I need to do some more work on that.

Something else you Portlanders can do is head out to the Stumptown Comicsfest this weekend. Lots of neat stuff to see there.

I will make sure to get in some time to enjoy the warm weather, too. I hope you all have a good weekend!

bits and bobs

I have been working in the craft den this afternoon. I am working on a small collage (and finding the fact that it is small difficult to fit things in) possibly for a postcard exchange - but we will see how it turns out. :-7 Here is a little sneak peak:

Going through things today gave me a chance again to see what I have. I forget once it is put away! I found some great things that prompted two new easy project ideas that you should see soon.

Here is a neat thing that I found today that I had forgotten about. These small Old Maid cards look like they are from the mid 1950's. I especially love Tubbins!

cheese mice

Today I put on a tea party for a friend and myself. We ate lots of goodies and drank lots of tea. Hope I can get to sleep tonight.

This was one of my gifts from her. Vintage Cheese Mice! As it says on the box, great for serving hor'dourves, especially cheese! They look as though they have never been used. They were made in Japan. I love them!

update to The Cedar Chest

Lots of new things in my vintage store The Cedar Chest. Come on by.