Junk journal folks go nuts for vintage Christmas ephemera. Old postcards, stamps, worn paper… the more it looks like it sat in Grandma’s attic since 1912, the better.

You can make your own in about the time it takes to find the scissors. (Where do the scissors even go? Every December. Gone.)

Here’s the prompt from my toolbox. Paste it, run it, print it.

THE PLR SHOP

Done-for-you content you can put your name on

PLR articles and ebooks you can rebrand and sell as your own (or hand out as a lead magnet).

Browse the PLR Shop →

A vintage Christmas postcard shown as a flat, front-on printable scan. Scene: a snowy farmhouse at dusk with a horse-drawn sleigh out front and warm light glowing in the windows. Style: antique hand-tinted lithograph with fine ink linework and soft watercolor washes. Paper: aged cream card with light foxing spots, softly worn corners and a faint halftone texture. Details: a red and green holly border, plus a canceled postage stamp and a round postmark in the top corner. The greeting "Merry Christmas" in elegant hand-lettered script across the top. The card fills the whole frame: no table, no hands, no props around it.

That’s what came back for the sample above. Snowy farmhouse, sleigh, holly border, stamp and postmark. It even dated the postmark DEC 24 1912 on its own, which I didn’t ask for, but I’ll take it.

Make It Yours!

Swap the brackets and go.

A vintage Christmas postcard shown as a flat, front-on printable scan. Scene: [YOUR SCENE]. Style: antique hand-tinted lithograph with fine ink linework and soft watercolor washes. Paper: aged cream card with light foxing spots, softly worn corners and a faint halftone texture. Details: [BORDER], plus a canceled postage stamp and a round postmark in the top corner. The greeting "[GREETING]" in elegant hand-lettered script across the top. The card fills the whole frame: no table, no hands, no props around it.

A few scenes to get you started:

• Kids sledding past a covered bridge
• A general store window full of toys at night
• Carolers under a gas streetlamp
• A cardinal on a snowy fence post

For the greeting, try “Season’s Greetings” or “Happy New Year.” If you’d rather letter the cards yourself, replace that whole sentence with “No text anywhere on the card.”

The Line You Should Not Touch!

“The card fills the whole frame: no table, no hands, no props around it.”

Leave that one alone. Without it you can end up with a styled photo of a postcard sitting on a wooden table next to a pinecone. Pretty for Instagram. Not so great for printing.

It won’t always go edge to edge, either. My sample came back with a little white margin around the card, which is easy to crop.

Full Disclosure

Lettering is still the gamble. The greeting came out spelled right on my runs, but script text is where generators slip the most, so check it before you print or list anything. I’ll usually run 2 to 4 at once and keep the best one.

Printing standard 4×6 postcards? Set your generator to 2:3 and pick the highest resolution it offers.

Selling These?

If you’re putting junk journal kits on Etsy, the art is only half the job. You still need listings, blog posts and emails to move them. That’s where my PLR shop comes in: done-for-you content you can put your name on and use as your own.

Browse the PLR Shop →

Go make something your customers won’t find in every other shop. Merry Christmas… in September. 😊