The "Starting The Holidays With A Hand-Made Greeting Card - Part I" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Starting to get ready to celebrate Christmas.  Now, I know that everyone doesn't celebrate Christmas with the Jewish celebrating Hanukkah, the Muslims celebrating Ramadan and various other religions celebrating their own special day or days, but for my family Christmas is the holiday on which we celebrate the birthday of our savior.  And...one of the ways that we celebrate Christmas is by sending greeting, or Christmas cards to help everyone get into the mood for the upcoming celebration on December 25.  I taught high school Industrial Arts for just short of 35 years and one of the items that we created and printed in my class was a greeting or holiday cards.  Some years I had my class make them using the intaglio process where they would scratch their ideas into a plastic plate, add ink on the plate and rub it into the scratches, wipe the excess ink off the plate and print it on a moist piece of paper by running the paper and inked plastic plate through a press.  Other years I would have my classes use linoleum blocks and carve ideas into the linoleum, run an inked roller over the remaining linoleum block and print it on the letterpress.  At times some would use more than one block if they cared to print their job in more than one color.  And finally, my second year classes would print their cards on the offset press using the offset lithography process.  They too, could make their cards in more than one color.  I tell you all this since my story today will show you greeting cards that have been sent to my family by other teachers and friends, all of them self-made by one of the processes I have described above.  I will share a few cards in today's story and in the next week will add a few more stories and cards so you can see the talent that many people have when making their own greeting cards for the season.  I hope you enjoy them as much as we have enjoyed receiving them over the past 50+ years.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy. 

This card and the next 5 cards were sent to me by Mr. Urban Monical whom I had as a teacher in photography, weaving and leather working at Millerwsville State Teacher's College in 1962-1966.  They all opened, but I am showing you just the outside cover of the cards. Click to enlarge them.

Urban Monical cards

The final four cards were made by Miss Linda Hilgert whom I taught with at Manheim Township High School. She was an extremely talented art teacher, as you can see by these cards.