Merry Christmas and a Beautiful New Year

We are very happy at the Antique Photography Studio family. Cheerful for our lives and togetherness, we are joyful spending our lives inspiring love to each other and, of course, we are rejoiced for having our family and friends in our lives and we are honored surrounded by their love. Therefore we decided to put our hands to work on the making of our Christmas cards, a warm and intimate way of showing our appreciation to our beloved ones.

It was a beautiful project filled with lots of fun, friendship and scholarship. We are convinced we can do infinite things with our hands and we want to share some of the moments we spent following the 20 Easy Steps to make one of a kind Christmas Cards.

1- Sketch your design on a piece of paper and 2- Look for the right envelopes to make sure your final cards will fit in them. 

3- Make the paper for the cards. With the help of our friend Ray, we used cotton fibers mixed with recycled paper to make a beautiful textured paper. 4- Convert your living room into a photo studio to shoot the family portrait. We used a white backdrop to make it easier inserting the autumn foliage on our final image.

5- Take a letterpress workshop to learn how to use this fantastic way of printing. The Englewood Depot is a great place to do so. 6- Printing on letterpress you'll be able to use movable types. 7- Or you'll probably prefer to use a negative in order to make a photopolymer plate.

8- Expose the photopolymer under UV light as shown by our friend Tom. 9- After exposed, washed and brushed, your plate is almost ready to print. 10- Now you have to place the plates along with any type on the frame and lock it ready to be mounted on the press.

11- Choose the letterpress that better fit your needs. We used a 1917 Chandler and Price press for our project. 12- After several position and color adjustments you will be ready to print on your previously trimmed cotton paper. The beauty of this system is in printing one piece at a time.

13- Now is the time to process and print the family portrait. And right after that, you have to trim the borders using special roughed scissors. 14- Use your sewing machine to stitch the pictures to the cards, avoiding the use of glue, which will damage the paper over time.

15- Finishing the seams is laborious and time consuming work, but working at home it becomes joyful. 16- The girl was very excited as well as she was helping with the positioning and glued of the ribbons. 17- Most beautiful time spent working together, dad and daughter.

18- And they’re almost ready. It’s time to practice your calligraphy skills, and get some good ink and nibs. 19- Now you’re ready to put the names of your loved ones on the beautiful envelopes you chose on step 2.

We wish you a very Merry Christmas and a Lovely New Year, from the bottom of our hearts.

20- You'll never forget this magnificent experience.

These are News from the Antique Photography Studio.