We have been secretly working on this project for a couple months. And now that they are arriving in folks Mailboxes I figured I would post a little “Astronaut Santa Story” Cause well, even though by all appearances these are basically christmas cards.. from our perspective they were this huge project with a million little steps that was as satisfying as it was challenging. 

It started with wanting to do a christmas card for 2015. But I had this vision of something different. First off we wanted to do a small intaglio print. (Which ended up being the largest Intaglio edition to come out of AP). We printed up hundreds of these little prints. I used mainly scrap arches from various other prints. So there are some paper variances. And it was time consuming.. But insanely satisfying,There was no concern for marketability or sales or release dates or anything. It is so cool doing something exactly how we want it without any bullshit distracting from the point of it all. Intensely enjoyable.

After printing and flattening. We went to work on the backers. Decided to send these out in a polybag with a rigid chipboard backer. And then just simply print a christmas message on the back of the chipboard.. 

That’s the metal type for the backer, Love using metal type, Luckily Donna is a champ at setting type. Cause I have these useless sausage fingers.  

And there is the heartfelt message. We did another run through the C&P to give a nice metallic silver medallion. It has a lovely embossment into the chipboard.  I am quite fond of these backers.

We printed on the Intaglio itself too. It is rare to get an opportunity to use a gothic font. There was no hesitation on pulling the trigger on Gothic Font haha. The mixture of Intaglio and Letterpress is so cool. It’s a tactile experience!!

For the envelopes we wanted to do something different too. Astronaut Santa can’t be mailed in a bland envelope.. nope nope. So we bought the biggest damn roll of kraft paper in the world. 800 feet should be enough right? and proceeded to cut and glue hundreds of envelopes. yeehaw This was a family affair - (Sally and our Niece Tracy were huge helpers)

Which of course had to get run through the C&P as well.. (more gothic font.. just screams yuletide cheer) 

And went ahead and threw some silver on the back as well for good measure. 

Then we addressed and packed and glued them all up. We checked and double checked and hopefully only a couple of you got empty envelopes haha

Last but not least, we busted out my hundred year old perforator.. cause you know - perforation is important - 

And well then we mailed them all off - and that was pretty damn stressful. I had a panicky feeling leaving the post office, like all my envelopes would fall apart in the mail machines.. inexplicable irrational. 

Merry Christmas, happy holidays to all of you, I hope your cards make it safely. Me, Donna, Sally and Lil Joe Appreciate you all with the force of a thousand exploding suns. .

your pal,

Joe and Family