Since I opened my Etsy shop, I’ve been planning to make a set of Christmas cards. You just have to, when you’re a Christmas lover, like I am. But alas, the inspiration was far far away because I wanted to create something in my own style, something a little bit different from what you’re used to, but still very Christmassy. What to do?

I did do some sketches, but didn’t like them. I looked at all kinds of Christmas stuff on Pinterest to get an idea of what makes something look like Christmas – is it the color combinations or the motifs? I certainly didn’t feel like doing Santa’s in red or green Christmas trees.

I’ve always loved the graphic styles from the 50-70s, so I started a board of Christmas stuff from that time. And – hooray – christmas was in all colors back then; pink, orange, teal, brown, purple etc.

At the same time I did this grey and neon colored quote and I had a painted paper laying around, waiting for a quote. But then I saw a fox appearing from the marks. I started tracing it and more animals and trees came through. I filled the gaps with grey, outlined and doodled a little more. It was a lot of fun!

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The last doodles I did, was the snowflakes and there it was – my new Christmas style, yeah!

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Next step was painting a series of painted papers, making marks and finding the hidden Christmas motifs in them.

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Out of the 10 paintings I chose the 4 I liked the best. They were scanned so I could do the finishing touches on my computer to get the ready for print.

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Off to the printer they went and this is the final result, that quickly found their way to my Etsy shop.

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Merry Christmas!

Charlotte