Sending Holiday Cheer with Artifact Uprising

Sending holiday cards to friends and family has been a cherished tradition for me for as long as I can remember. As a child, I watched and helped my mom send out Christmas cards every season, each annual addition replete with a picture from a recent family adventure or matching tartan pyjamas (one of my favourites). My mom still has a special photo album she brings out every holiday season with her family Christmas cards from years past– it’s so fun to look back on them all!

Despite living in the UK, where sending holiday photo cards was less common, I started my own tradition as soon as we started our family. Our first one features a 6-month-old Easton wearing a red jumper, sitting on a park bench in Hyde Park! I still remember how excited I was to send my very own Christmas cards. With the exception of last year, I have sent out holiday cards every year for the past 11 years. Not always on time, granted — the year Marlow was born my Christmas cards went out in February (with added Valentine’s Day wishes! Haha!) — but each year nonetheless.

This year I took advantage of having a few weeks of cozy downtime in the Pacific Northwest to get our cards ordered, penned and posted. Holed up in our little beach cabin with stormy skies swirling around us, we sipped tea and sat together as a family writing holiday wishes to all of our family and friends. We also scrolled back through our collective memories of the past year, trying to recall all of the new friends we had made around the world, and then sent a card to each of them. It was a fun way to revisit our year of adventure, to reconnect to friends across the world and to slip into the holiday spirit.

This year, I ordered cards from Artifact Uprising, a company specializing in printed photo products with a focus on quality, design and responsibly sourced materials. The company was founded in 2012 by two sisters, both professional photographers, and is now part of the VSCO family, whose iPhone software I already use to edit my photos. Their website is really easy to use and they have more than 50 customizable designs for this holiday season. I tried out a few, saved my favourites and then canvassed Michael and the kids’ opinions. We all agreed on a multi-picture design with some favourite black & white images from our time in Byron Bay earlier this year.

The cards arrived quickly, which was very handy as I wanted to send them before we left for Australia, and the quality of the 100% recycled paper was impressive. I opted for the upgraded envelopes in iron grey, which were also well constructed and made everything feel a bit more special (Ivy especially loved addressing the dark envelopes in a cheerful mix of colours!). With the help of the kids I got through our entire list of family and friends (not so easy when you have massive families on both sides) and just today I dropped them all at the local post office.

In September I visited my friend Sally in Connecticut. I was so touched to see a collection of our Christmas cards from many years past on a shelf in her kitchen. I do the same with hers. Ours is a world of virtual communication now, but even the most clever technology cannot create the joy of receiving a genuine, thoughtful and tactile card from a friend. I am so glad I was brought up before the internet took over all correspondence. Christmas cards are a tradition I will continue to keep and I hope my children will do the same. Thank you Artifact Uprising for making this year so easy, fun and stylish.

This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of Artifact Uprising. I only work with companies whose products I genuinely admire. All of the opinions and text are entirely my own.