Seriously, this is what I had to work with. Totally uninspired.

I hate that I love tacky souvenir shops. I can’t get enough of them, I personally blame my upbringing (another thing that I hate/love to do). Like millions of Americans, I was raised to believe that a vacation was not really a vacation until you had purchased your obligatory T-shirt with the screen printed (embroidered if you could afford it) name of your current family-friendly vacation locale like Williamsburg, Virginia or Gettysburg Pennsylvania. I have personally taken time out of my life, to agonize over whether or not I wanted the t-shirt with the canons and sabers or the one with Abraham Lincoln with the Gettysburg Address scripted behind him.*

I hate/love the shelves filled with seashell encrusted jewelry boxes, ridiculously expensive coffee table books, and the little personalized license plates on the spin rack by checkout that never have my name (They always spell it with a “Y”. Bastards.). But what I really love are postcards– but not just postcards: vintage-style, overpriced postcards. Sometimes, I don’t even send them. I keep them in a repurposed shoebox next to my computer and periodically rifle through them like old photos. Here is my postcard from a luncheon dated 1925 from Longwood Gardens, Pennsylvania, tucked between my Vespa postcard from Naples, Italy and my Elvis postcard from a trip to Memphis complete, with his trademark recipe for Peanut Butter and Banana Sandwiches.

Imagine my disappointment then, when on a recent trip to Lake Placid, I discovered that my beloved tacky souvenir shops were either out of my vintage-style, overpriced postcards or didn’t sell them at all. I’ll save you the energy and tell you it was disproportionately comical:

Maple sugar candy– check.
10 different varieties of New England Maple syrup– check.
Elk beef jerky– check.
Sweatshirts, tote-bags, and baseball caps with the words “Miracle” or “Hockey” stiched on them– checkcheckCHECK! Where the hell are my postcards???

Long story short– they didn’t have any. So I created my own, I am industrious that way. Now, I know I didn’t reinvent the wheel here, but I found myself really enjoying the process of creating postcards that were inspired by my own photography and I'm pretty happy with how they turned out. Especially taking into account that I am not an illustrator and practically have no game when it comes to free-hand drawing. But give me a pen tool in Adobe Illustrator and I can trace in the top 60% percentile. Yeah, that’s selling it.

In any case, I hope you enjoy them as much as I did making them!

*You can’t go wrong with Abraham Lincoln.