• Mass-produce a child’s work of art via a design drawn deeply with a pen into a styrofoam meat tray - roll ink on with a roller (procured at an art supply store), then press the design onto card stock.

• Recycle old Christmas cards into new ones... Layer, or glue as mosaics, pieces of old cards into new pictures. (Ha, that’s how I use some of those sterile business-sent cards!) Or use an old card-front as a cut-out frame for a new layer underneath.

• Take a winter photo (maybe even a Christmas photo, from another year) of your home and/or environs - reproduce and glue to each folded card.

• Or how about a summer photo? Something, at any rate, to remind people of all the year, or a part of it that was (or will be) particularly enjoyable.

• Photocopy onto heavy paper a non-copyrighted or original design or picture denoting the season, along with a warm poem. Here’s a potent poem I used for a Christmas postcard one year (along with an unusual stylized woodcut print of a kneeling angel looking down at the words):

Ah, friends, dear friends, as years go on and heads get gray, how fast the guests do go!
Touch hands, touch hands, with those that stay.
Strong hands to weak, old hands to young, around the Christmas board, touch hands.
The false forget, the foe forgive, for every guest will go and every fire burn low and cabin empty stand.
Forget, forgive, for who may say that Christmas day may ever come to host or guest again.
Touch hands!

(That’s by William Henry Harrison "Adirondack" Murray. I believe I found it by cruising through Bartlett's Familiar Quotations - one of my favorite books.)
  

• Or then there’s the computer-generated or photocopied Christmas letter... I always hope for a family photo in one corner!

• Or sometimes pictures speak in place of many of the words that could be said, and the greeting will be a lovely sheet of photocopied pictures of scenes from throughout the year... a wonderful treat! (Captions are nice too, though.)
   
• And now that the Post Office offers custom-printed stamps, you can even put a special photo or greeting on your postage. Go to www.usps.com for this option.

Look for greeting card ideas in your holiday mail!