Its That Time of the Year - Christmas Productions

I knew it would be a long holiday season when I saw Christmas decorations co-mingling with the Halloween decorations at my local Lowes. Just a week later I was at Home Depot (better wood, better selection) and they were clearing out an area getting ready for Christmas and just down the way was another huge display of Halloween decorations. Do we really need a Christmas season that lasts for 3 1/2 months?

But what it did remind me to do was get busy on the Christmas cards for this year as that is just a time consuming process and this holiday season looks to be a busy one for us. Fortunately I'm way ahead of the game because we ended up not producing cards last year so my printing block is already to go.

I did a few test prints to see what they were going to look like and if there was anything glaring that I might need to correct. Last year I did the initial work on my little Neje laser, unfortunately it didn't burn deep enough but it was good start to the carving and saved me a lot of work. All I had to do was get out the ink, paper, a brayer and the block and I was set to go. You can see the results below.

My basic, and primitive, printing setup. Just a some wood thrown together (and made as square as possible) to hold the block in place and hold the paper in place and square to the block. I use a piece of plastic to spread ink out on.

The first two prints. The first one I did is on the right. I did rub it down well enough to get a good imprint. The second one was better and it showed where I had some high points that needed to be cut down.

After a bit of minor work I like this print. All the high spots have been knocked down. The "a" in Christmas is a bit deformed but there is nothing I can do at this point to fix that. This first color I'm trying out is Phthalo Green. I will be trying Prussian Blue and Ultramarine next and then we will decide what to use. I have a Napthol Red, but I'm not wild about it.