Valentines

Postcard

Valentine postcards made on a Vandercook letterpress machine featuring romance novel covers.

Inspired by Marian Bantjes’s valentines, I wanted to start a project that was meant to be shared amongst people and spread love. I was excited about the idea of making polymer plates out of romance novel covers because I find them very interesting from a visual and design perspective.

On the front of the post card I printed the cover of a romance novel. On one version, I created my own motif to border the image to add my own hand to the imagery and to play with the idea of the piece being an embellished postcard. On the back, I selected a passage at random from within the chosen book to print with a separate polymer plate. I wanted to add a visual element that looked handwritten so that it felt like a heartfelt valentine that someone had sent you in the mail. At the bottom, I printed a valentine’s day motif with another polymer plate.