Linocut Christmas Cards

A linocut is a block printing or relief printing method. In the image above you can see the print on the paper as it is pulled off of the linocut that the ink is rolled onto.

This year, I decided to make custom, handmade, hand-printed linocuts to send out as our Christmas and New Years cards. I started by designing the stamp that I would carve, gathering a couple of linocut tools, and testing out the process on some smaller pieces of rubber/linoleum.

The design incorporates several highlights from Chris and my 2024 year. You can see them below

After designing the stamp, I redrew it on tracing paper with a soft pencil. Then I laid this, graphite side down, on my easy cut, lino block. I retraced the design, pressing the graphite into the block. When I lifted off the tracing paper, the graphite had transferred very well to the block.

This is a mirror image of my design, but this is perfect because, like a rubber stamp, it will create another mirror image when I print with it. So the final design will be the same orientation as what I drew on the tracing paper.

Next I carved out the empty spaces of my design, keeping in mind the orientation of my cuts to flow with the different design elements. Often the strokes can be seen in the print if some sections are close enough to the ink surface, this is called "chatter".

I washed the graphite off with soap and water. Those were the instructions for cleaning the block after printing, so it seemed like a good thing to try and most of the graphite came off.

Then I rolled out some of the specific, block-printing ink with a brayer and started printing. It took a couple to get the ink thickness, pressure, and alignment correct, but then I produced 20 prints for my initial run. 

Our Christmas card list is closer to 40, so I'll likely do one more run of 20-30. But that will be all, two limited runs of prints to go out to our list.