Vintage postcards can become treasured pieces of art

Uh, oh. A quick look at the calendar is all it takes to tell me the bad news. I didn’t get my cards out in time. Christmas has come and gone.

Most years I beg, bribe and cajole my children to gather and stand still long enough to get a nice photograph to include with a card. Other years, like this one, when time flies faster than I can catch it, I look for vintage cards in antique stores and flea markets and send them out instead. I think of it as a way to recycle holiday cheer.

This year, instead of the Christmas cards I never got addressed and signed, I’ll send cards wishing my friends and family a Happy New Year.

I have a collection of vintage postcards that I pick up all year long at flea markets and antique malls.

They are all beautifully decorated and some have short, sweet, messages on the back. Many of them were sent almost 100 years ago to wish someone else a Happy New Year.

To make it easier to mail the cards, and to protect them, I buy or make plain, folded, 4 x 6 note cards and then attach the vintage postcard to the front with old fashioned photo-corners. That gives the postcard an added punch, and treats it more like a little piece of art. And the card can still be removed so that the message, postmark or stamp on the back can be appreciated.

The note card also acts as an easel for the postcard and it can be displayed on tabletops or other holiday arrangements.

I have one friend who saved the card I sent one Christmas several years ago, and she rotates her own favorite postcards, slipping them into the photo-corners on the front of the note card.

There is always a card celebrating a holiday, birthday or even with a historical photograph of the city in which she lives, on the table in her den.

So I didn’t get the Christmas cards done. Who cares? I can still send New Year greetings to my loved ones decorated by a card that made the same trip, and carried the same kind of wishes, many years before.