This blog was like a home. I’ve been away for a while. It’s been dif­fi­cult to return from a sea­son of loss­es, in which I’m still find­ing myself wan­der­ing. This is one of my repeat­ed attempts in find­ing myself. 

Every year Mike and I make Christ­mas cards. A tra­di­tion since we’ve been mar­ried a dozen years ago. This year we almost did­n’t make it, but we did final­ly, with just what we have. We thought we need­ed oth­er things, but real­ized, as we were going through the process, that we already have what we needed.

We had an idea to make block prints of a hedge­hog with mush­rooms grow­ing out of its back. Mike told me about this plush toy that he and his broth­er got from a mas­sive Kinder Egg when they were chil­dren one Christ­mas. Our nieces and nephews now have the hedge­hog. The chil­dren kind­ly share a photo: 

(The mush­rooms on this hedge­hog are green, blue and red.)

We thought about mak­ing a block print of the hedge­hog with lino blocks. I thought it would be too much work. I thought we could just use foam pieces from food trays. 

I cut shapes of the body and head of the hedge­hog from the foam tray with a basic util­i­ty knife. Mike had the bril­liant idea of tap­ing (with dou­ble-sided tape) the foam shape to the bot­tom of a glass con­tain­er in order to make prints. That way, I can see exact­ly where the shape was print­ing onto the paper, and have an almost per­fect reg­is­tra­tion (in print­mak­ing terms). 

This is the foam piece (head of the hedge­hog) taped to the bot­tom of the glass con­tain­er, and me brush­ing acrylic paint on it with a foam brush.

This is me press­ing it onto the card with the oth­er part of the hedge­hog already print­ed on it.

I hope this makes sense. But if it does­n’t, and you’d like to try a sim­i­lar thing, just leave me a mes­sage in the comments.

Here is the herd of hedgehogs…

May you too find joy and com­fort in both famil­iar and unex­pect­ed things around you this hol­i­day season.

Send­ing much love.