Our First Christmas Card Collection

We are very proud to introduce our first-ever Christmas card collection. Christmas has always been our favorite time of the year (we love it so much that our wedding date was December 15, 2007), and when I first started dreaming of Gerald and Joan, I knew Christmas would be an integral part of our business.

Fast forward several months, and our family slides came into my possession. As soon as I saw these images, I knew they were supposed to be our 2013 Christmas card collection. Our mission statement -- preserving history through design -- comes alive through this collection. These images and the cards themselves are completely timeless, yet nostalgic, and they effortlessly blend the past with the present and future.

Here's a little bit more about the collection from our look book:

The first Christmas collection from Gerald and Joan features five Kodachrome photographs from our personal archives. The images were taken at Joan's family home of Gates Mills, Ohio in the 1940s. Scanned from slides discovered after decades in storage, these vintage images transport us back to a simpler time when a white Christmas felt truly magical. To ensure each photograph shines, they are printed on heavy bright white cover stock. Inside each folded card the cover image is repeated and joined by a whimsical holiday greeting. The Christmas magic is then brought to life with a light dusting of crystal glitter and snow and embossed snowflakes dancing across each envelope flap.*

The collection features two options, plus our "little extras" -

5 x 7 Folded Card Set: A basic package of 10 cards includes two copies of our five classic designs. The cards are two-sided, and they are accompanied by 10 high quality A7 metallic silver envelopes.

4.5 x 6.25 Postcard Set: A basic package of 10 cards includes two copies of our five classic designs.

Little Extras* Three Snowflakes Embossed on Envelopes Dusting of crystal glitter and snow on cards Handwritten signatures printed inside each card (you send us your signatures and we digitize and add them to the cards)

The basic packages of 10 cards are now available in our Etsy shop. If you would like to purchase a larger quantity or a custom order with any or all of our little extras, contact us below:

[contact-form subject='[Gerald %26amp; Joan'][contact-field label='Name' type='name' required='1'/][contact-field label='Email' type='email' required='1'/][contact-field label='Website' type='url'/][contact-field label='Comment' type='textarea' required='1'/][/contact-form]

View the entire Gerald and Joan Christmas Look Book here or click on the image below.

We are so proud to be able to share this collection with you today! Ironically, November 15 happens to be our day to decorate our house for Christmas (a tradition we started in 2006), and it also marks the tenth anniversary of our first real date. :)

Christmas Collection Sneak Peek

Gerald and Joan is excited to announce that our first collection of Christmas cards and postcards will debut later this week! While some of us are nostalgic all year long, most of us feel nostalgic at Christmastime. Whether we're baking cookie recipes that have been in our families for generations, singing carols and hymns that have been enjoyed for centuries or trimming our trees with ornaments that belonged to our parents and grandparents, Christmas is a time for treasuring memories, carrying on traditions and enjoying every moment of the season surrounded by our family and friends.

As nostalgia, tradition and heritage are all integral to our design process, it probably doesn't come as a surprise that our Christmas collection evokes those feelings. The collection features five snowy images from Gerald and Joan's personal archives. They are 1940s slides of Joan's childhood home in Gates Mills, Ohio, that I scanned and edited myself. The cards are printed on 110# bright white cover stock to highlight the breathtaking scenes, and they are accented with a dusting of extra fine white glitter and crystal "snow." To continue the sparkling theme, they are accompanied by metallic silver envelopes.

Like Gerald and Joan itself, this collection was a labor of love for us. It takes a little bit of our history and shares it with the world. Though simple, it accomplishes the founding principle of Gerald and Joan -- it preserves a little piece of history through our design work. It also makes us very proud.

Family and friends, look for your very own card from the collection in the mail this holiday season, as we plan to send out a Santa-sized sack of them! If you would like to support our work and send some of your very own, both the cards and postcards will be available for purchase through the blog on Friday. While we're partial for handwritten Christmas messages, they can also be personalized for easy mailing. :)

We would love to help you send out some vintage-inspired Christmas cheer this December!

[gallery type="rectangular" ids="2380,2379,2376,2375,2378,2373,2377,2374,2372"]

Friends of Gerald & Joan: Penny and Tubs

Since April, I have been fortunate to work with the lovely Marcie May. After more than 20 years in the music business, Marcie wanted to start a fresh chapter in her career when she dreamt about a magical underwater city. She shared the strange dream with several friends, and all of them encouraged her to write a children's book using the dream as inspiration. With her granddaughter and cat serving as the title characters, Marcie and her daughter, Vonnie, co-wrote Penny and Tubs: The City on the Sea. Drawing on her musical talents, Marcie also wrote a song and music to go along with the book. When I first met Marcie, Headline Kids had just published the book, but she needed some help sharing the book, music and characters with young readers in the tri-state area of Kentucky, Ohio and Tennessee.

As a lifelong reader and lover of the written word, I was thrilled to have the opportunity to work with Marcie. Books had one of the greatest impacts on me as a child, and I actually still have all of my childhood books (more on them later)! In college, I interned at the Lafayette County Literacy Council in Oxford, Mississippi, and that experience greatly influenced my decision to focus on nonprofit graphic design, public relations and marketing. Without books and my college internship, Gerald & Joan would not exist today, so in a way, working with Marcie felt like I was coming full circle.

For the past seven months, I've implemented a variety of projects to help tell Marcie's story and promote the first Penny and Tubs' book and song. Using the vibrant colors and book's characters as inspiration, I created branded publicity materials for Penny and Tubs including a press kit/pitch packet, publicity flyer (shown below) and 2013-14 scheduling calendar. I also built a comprehensive list of schools, libraries, YMCAs and media contacts in her target markets. So far, we have had great success scheduling readings and sing alongs at schools and YMCAs, and we're developing strong, lasting relationships with these teachers and students. Here's a blurb and photo from one of her recent readings. The kids had so much fun!

Since the launch of Penny and Tubs: The City on the Sea, Marcie has received two awards -- a Readers' Favorite Award (bronze, preschool) and a Mom's Choice Award for Fiction (silver, ages 5-8). Her second book in the Penny and Tubs series will launch in spring 2014.

If you are shopping young children this Christmas, please consider supporting Marcie's work by purchasing a copy of the book and music. They are available on her adorable website.

Thank you, Marcie, for allowing Gerald & Joan to be a part of the Penny and Tubs story! :)

The Story of Gerald and Joan

One year ago, from our hotel room balcony with the Pacific Coast Highway and Hermosa Beach in front of me, I wrote the words "Gerald and Joan" in a notebook. Jonathan and I were visiting our favorite place together for the first time since July 4th of the previous year. I had been in the South Bay area exactly one year before to help my mom pack Joan's house before the new owners took possession.

I didn't realize it at the time, but that moment -- the entire trip really -- was a turning point in our lives. Although Gerald and Joan was just a pipe dream -- simply an idea to create and style pretty things to supplement my current income -- it would soon alter our world.

Born under the California sun with the view of Palos Verdes and my great-grandmother's home in the distance, we have nurtured that dream at home in Tennessee this past year. Carrying the name of my grandma and Jonathan's grandfather, Gerald and Joan has united our own heritage.

What began as a vintage-inspired business has become a business of storytelling -- for families, friends, events, small businesses and nonprofits. The stories take a variety of forms, but they are there all the same. By preserving these stories, Gerald and Joan ensures that they'll exist tomorrow. Along the way, we keep alive the memories, treasures and traditions. We preserve history by design --- weaving it into a fabric that can only be described as heritage.

[gallery type="rectangular" ids="2345,2346,2347,2348,2349,2350,2351,2352,2353,2354,2355,2356,2357,2358"]