Friday February 13, 2026
Making Some Cards
With Valentine’s Day happening tomorrow, this feels like a good opportunity to share some of the cards I’ve made over the years!
This is my preferred method for making cards.
In 2016, I started teaching linocut printmaking classes for the Akron Summit County Public Libraries.
Making cards to sell in galleries became a fun project for me and a way to repurpose collage materials and papers I’d accumulated all throughout college.
Studying printmaking in school is a great way to amass a huge supply of extra paper and experimental prints. I had editions of prints from assignments when I was learning etching, lithography, monotype, screen printing, and various letterpress techniques. I tend not to be very sentimental about my previous artwork, so these were all prints that I had no intention of ever showing again. While I was starting to marble overtop some of this paper (I was getting deeper into marbling at this time, too), my collage instinct was coming to the surface again.
Anytime I wanted to feature words, I would have to carve them backwards on the block so the printed image would read forwards.
I would figure out my design on tracing paper before transferring it on to the linoleum block.
Left: The linoleum block for my “Happy Hanukkah in Hebrew” menorah card. I carved the star on the bottom with the intention of collaging a colorful paper piece on the cards.
Right: This little Christmas tree was a sample I made in one of my workshops that I incorporated into a card later.
For this card, I wanted to print two layers on top of each other. The block on the left I printed first in yellow, and the more detailed block on the right I printed in blue.
Like the Happy Birthday block, I worked out how the two layers would fit together on tracing paper first before carving them.
I carved this flower without any particular card in mind for it. The block on the right was made by my friend Shirley who generously gave me many of her art supplies. After making some prints of both blocks, I decided to collage them together and incorporate them into a card.
This is the block I made as a portrait of my grandpa’s little dog Milo! He’s a morkie.
I used the smallest gouge to carve away the fur texture.
For some reason, I printed these on kozo and other handmade papers which I then cut out and glued to the card. When I think back on it, this added an “unnecessary” step to the card process. But I’m a sucker for little details, and the handmade paper texture made the print even more precious.
Patchwork Cards
This time last year, I cranked the collage element of my cardmaking up to 11! I wanted to use the green cardstock from a pad I bought years ago, and I ended up with 42 unique collage cards.
By this time, I had also accumulated collage materials from books I was using for making my magnets, so I wanted to incorporate scraps from that project.
I WISH I took pictures of all of them before sending them off to galleries, but that’s okay. I had a blast making them!
