‘Six Geese NOT Laying’ - Two Colour Relief Print Christmas Card Design

Inspiration

I have a friend who is a cattle farmer. She also has some very cheeky geese who send one goose to distract the humans while the others get up to mischief like scrumping apples in the autumn!

I’d had the idea for this card for a little while but decided to use Canada geese as they seem even more cantankerous than all the others and you wouldn’t want to mess with them if they refused to lay...

Design

Unusually for me, this was a two colour print, meaning I’d need to create one plate for the red bits (the hats, scarves and text) and another for the black bits (the geese and the snow).

So that they would line up when I printed the black over the red, I traced the design twice and set to work.

Here’s the image traced onto the Lino ready to cut.

My goodness, it would have been much easier to just drop the text into the card design when I sent it to the printer, because text is much harder to cut than feathers, fins or fur, but where’s the fun in that? Besides, I do like a challenge...

So, here’s how the red bits looked when I printed them. Ghostly garments awaiting their geese.

Come on, ink, dry so I can print the black layer!

This is the proof of the black bits. Definitely ready to be printed over the top of the red layer and with that, we were done!

Cantankerous geese decidedly NOT laying.

While I was printing this card, I was sad to learn that many of the food parcels that were distributed in 2020 by the UK’s Food Banks were given to families with children.

Christmas is supposed to be magical for kids and the thought of little ones going hungry on such a big day for them was hard to bear... So I decided I would make the Trussell Trust (Food Bank) my chosen charity of 2020. I donated 50p from the sale of each 'Six Geese NOT Laying' card to the Trussell Trust (Food Bank) which was my chosen charity for 2020.

[Edited December 31, 2020]

It seemed that many of you wanted to help, too and bought multiples of 5 and 10 of the Six Geese NOT Laying cards.

Your generosity meant I was able to make a hefty donation to the Food Bank. Thank you.

[Edited November 1, 2021]

Things haven’t improved much since I designed this card, so I will continue to help the Food Bank with donations from sales. This won’t cost you anything, the donation comes out of my profit, but it will help the people who need our help most.