grab bag blog

So December 2011 popped up suddenly and unexpectedly last year, arriving way earlier than I anticipated. I quickly found myself envious of these fancy designers I saw who had the time and resources to create beautiful holiday cards to send to their clients and prospective clients. I really wanted to do something similar, but I had way too many commitments to allow me the time to make something worthwhile. December passed in a flurry and I lamented my inability to get this simple task done.

By the time I got myself some vacation, it was the week of Christmas, at which point sending holiday cards is just embarrassing. In this downtime, though, I realized that what I really wanted to say in my holiday cards had nothing to do with Christmas, Hannukah, etc. What I wanted to do say to all my clients was thank you for their business and for allowing me to represent their brand. I have some great clients, and it’s because of them that I had a successful first full year as a professional freelancer. The appropriate holiday for that kind of retrospection, I decided, was actually New Years, and I totally had time to send cards for New Years!

By this point, however, I didn’t have the time or resources to create something big and fancy. What I did have lying around, however, was some leftover cardstock from when I published my own comics years and years (and years) ago. It’s a card stock that resembles cheap brown paper, a reference to the grab bag in my company name. And it’s legal size card stock, because I liked books that were 7″x8.5″. Have you ever tried to find legal size card stock? Good luck. And to find it in any kind of non-white color or pattern? It doesn’t exist. This stash I had special ordered from a paper supplier back in Georgia and had them cut it to legal size for me.

So I sat down and planned the card you see here, half a legal sheet (4.25″x14″), giving it two folds so that it not only had a fun reveal and plenty of space to write on, but would fit snugly into a standard 4 3/8″ x 5 3/4″ invitation envelope. I printed a batch of them on my home printer, hand-folded them, and wrote each of my clients a person note on the inside. I sent them all out just before New Year’s Eve. Since then, I’ve received nothing but smiles and reciprocated thank yous from the cards, proving that the whole enterprise was a success. The best part: I still have several sheets of the card stock left, and with a few tweaks of the art, I can whip up a non-holiday thank you note if I need one in a pinch.