2010 Valentines

It was around Christmas 2009 that I noticed a similarity in colour and sentiment between Christmas and Valentine’s Day—Red, White, Gold, Silver, Sparkles—and I hatched a plan to re-use old Christmas cards for my Valentine’s mailout.

I asked a number of friends (especially those with big firms) to send me their cards after Christmas—making sure they understood they’d be destroyed. Huge envelopes stuffed with cards came in. I discarded all the designy ones, and chose instead the generic, mass-produced cards, of which there were many.

I created the design of the heart for laser cutting … I wanted most of the card image to be cut away, but there to be enough left that some semblance of image remained; that you could tell it came from a christmas card.

The final result, after they were cut, exceeded my most hopeful expectations. I simply couldn’t believe how transformed the cards were; how these cards (most of which were, in their original state, nothing special, or even downright ugly) gained so much more from the process. And how incredibly attached I became to each and every card. They were very hard to give away.

I made about 500, and every single one is different.