The Monochrome Christmas Card

Another Halloween has gone, which means the Christmas season is close. If I remember, from my years in the photo finishing industry, this is the time of the year when more images are captured than at any other time. We would get bags of film delivered right after the new year and the plant operated at top volume for most of the month.

Now, in the digital age, some of us print everything at home or we use mini-labs and mail order for processing. Now is the time to stock up on paper and ink so you're ready for the rush, if you do everything at home.

For the past, I don't know, five years, at least, I have created the family Christmas/Holiday card. One season I designed a black & white image on light-grey card stock--about 100lb weight or index weight.

My family loved the idea and some congratulated me on going against the grain, by not doing color. They said the cards were easily noticeable amongst the glitter and foil of the others.

Now, for a confession. I didn't have a color printer at that time. My Epson 1280, which had been giving me trouble for many months, finally sucked its last picolitre of ink (1 thousand cubic micrometres) and, no matter how much I cajoled (read: cursed), nothing was going to bring it back. The last few months, when it was on life support, I had to clean the pick-up rollers almost daily; they were so slick they would grab more than one sheet or, most of the time, nothing. I had to hand feed the printer. So, the death of the 1280, while immediately disconcerting, put me in the market for a new printer.

However, I couldn't afford to lay out the money at this critical time, as Christmas was near and my wife, Allison, was begging (read: nagging) me for the cards, so she could get them in the mail.

There are times when lady fortune smiles, but sometimes it's just gas. I was caught in a dilemma. I had to produce a self-designed card, but felt I didn't have any way to print them. I could, I thought, send them out, but that would mean giving up control of the entire process--sometimes a mistake or flaw works its way into the final design and you don't catch it until you see the print. Sending a card outside, for printing, would mean I could get back hundreds of cards with a glaring mistake. Also, there was my ego working. I had tasked myself with the production and just wasn't ready to give it up.

That's when the idea of a B&W Christmas card came to me. I could, I thought, create the entire design and print them on the home-office laser printer, an inexpensive Brother HL-5040. I use that as the family's default printer, on the home network, to keep ink-jet costs down.

I shot the image, designed the card and fed the laser printer sheet by sheet (I used heavy card stock which wouldn't feed by itself). Once I printed a batch of fifty, I'd flip and reverse the paper and feed it through a second time, to print the message on the inside.

That's the story of the monochrome Christmas card. I was able to wink at lady fortune and she winked back. It wasn't gas, but a real smile after all. This year, I'm fully stocked on ink, the printer is new and I have plenty of paper. All I need is an idea...