Create your first image

Design a landscape with some winter trees in the foreground.

Draw a line around your first lino block, and create the background design.

This will be printed in the first colour.

Create your second image

Place a piece of tracing paper over your first drawing and create a line drawing for your second image. by drawing the foreground trees.

Again, draw a line around the border, so it matches the size of the lino.

Transfer your first image

1. Cut a piece of carbon paper the same size as your lino. Place it, shiny side down, onto your lino.

2. Carefully place your drawing on top, making sure it lines up with the edges of the lino. Using a pencil, or a pen that no longer works, draw over all of the lines.

3. You will now have a clear copy of your drawing on the lino.

Start cutting your first piece of lino

Using the finest tool first, cut the image shapes in the lino, pushing away from you.

Only remove the sections that you do not want to print. If you’re not sure about certain areas, leave them. You can always come back to them after the test-print.

To create texture use wider tools once you have defined the shapes within your design.

Transfer your second image and cut this out of your second piece of lino

Repeat steps three and four with your second image.

Do a test print

The two pieces of lino don’t have to be complete at this stage, but sufficiently ready for you to test what the image will look like. Make any obvious adjustments on either piece of lino.

1. Concentrate on your first piece of lino. Choose a colour. This should be the lighter colour, as this will be the background onto which you’ll overprint the darker foreground image.

2. Squeeze a small amount of ink onto your inking plate. If you want to mix specific colours do this now.
Then with your roller, roll a small amount of the ink on the plate in a square shape, until you get a nice smooth fine shine on both the plate and your roller.

3. Roll the ink onto your lino. If you need more, carefully repeat the process on your inking plate, making sure you don’t get too much ink on the roller.

4. Now drop a piece of test-print paper on top of your inked lino. Hold firm with one hand and apply pressure with your spoon with the other. Be careful not to let the paper slip, and try to make sure you have applied pressure evenly.

5. Remove the paper and take a look at your first printed image. In my print, I’m still not sure which colour to go with, so I have repeated the process three times (cleaning the lino with warm water each time) to help me decide.

Test print your second lino image on top of your first

1. Ink up your second piece of lino (lino 2) in the same way. When lino 1 test print is dry, turn over the inked lino 2 and place it on top of the test print, making sure the piece of lino is lined up with the edges of the test print. Press down firmly, but carefully.

2. Rub the back of the lino with your spoon, and (this is the trickiest bit) turn over the lino and paper, being careful not to let the paper or lino slip.
Now again, rub the paper with the spoon until you have applied pressure to all of the inked areas.

3. Pull off the paper and have a look at your design. Again, I experimented with the colour just to see what appeals to me. I eventually decided on the darker green colour and the black ink.

Apply your linocut prints to your greeting cards

When applying your linocut prints to your greeting cards you’ll need to put them both inkside-down onto the card, so you can position them correctly then carefully flip them over (as you did with lino 2).

Cut your card to A6 size, place in a landscape position and print on the right-hand side of the card, so that when it’s dry you can fold the card in half.

Order your blank cards and envelopes here

It’s never too late to make image adjustments. For my design, I decided to remove the birds, as they weren’t really adding anything to the design and were interfering with the falling snow.

I felt that the green and black didn’t seem wintery enough, so I changed my colours to shades of blue. I feel it works better.

Play around with colours and cut further until you are happy with your design, and then print away!

Try printing a different design with Margaret Mallows

Fancy using watercolours to paint your own Christmas cards too? Take a look at Lesley Linley's demonstration to paint this stained-glass effect robin.

Sometimes we may include links to online retailers, from which we might receive a commission if you make a purchase. Affiliate links do not influence editorial coverage and will only be used when covering relevant products.