Making Holiday Cards with Illuminated Lettering

We make a lot of cards around here. Seriously – a lot. We send them out for most major holidays and even the ones that aren’t really major but are fun, like St. Patrick’s Day.

I use these card-making projects to teach art, and so we try not to make cards the same way too often, but to use new techniques, skills, and materials to create cards for our family.

This year, though, I’ve been really stumped for St. Patrick’s Day, and it hasn’t helped that our calendar is slam-packed full. I knew I had to get really creative, and suddenly as the kids were discussing about whether to dress up as monks for an upcoming Medieval event I knew I had it – illuminated lettering.

We had talked about this a little bit already, but read up on the Book of Kells, the most famous illuminated manuscript. Then we watched this video about the Medieval alphabet and this one about making illuminated letters. This site also contains a printable with examples of an entire alphabet illuminated different ways, which was super helpful for the kids.

Then we headed out to the kitchen table to make our own. We used regular printer paper folded hamburger style, and the kids turned their papers whichever way they wanted. We talked about boxing your first letter in versus leaving it plain, and about gold leafing and more affordable options (like metallic Sharpies).

Then they got busy.

This is my Big Helper’s creation. She chose to make a box around the first letter, to make vines growing around it with small purple flowers, and then use ‘gold leaf.’

This is my Little Man’s card. It’s hard to see, but the big, pointy, dark thing on the left is the ‘H’ for ‘Happy St. Patrick’s Day.” He worked for a long time with this and then filled his card with color.

This was a fun activity. We learned about the history of printing and art during Medieval times, all while making gifts for our far-away family. We also realized just how long this must have taken – because the kids worked for at least an hour on that one letter!

Have you tried your hand at illuminating letters?

Interested in learning more? Check out these fun resources