HB Senior Sub-Editor Shelley Tustin

Christmas comes early at the HB office, with the team finding themselves surrounded by bonbons, baubles and mince pies as early as August. While this inevitably leads to premature Christmas anxiety (imagine having that panicked week-before-Christmas feeling in September!), it also means that we get to spend plenty of time admiring the more beautiful (and tasteful!) yuletide accessories, such as Christmas cards.

The sending of Christmas cards might be a dying ritual, replaced by chirpy little e-cards with dancing Santas, but I still think nothing says "Merry Christmas" like getting a hand-addressed envelope in the mail. I love these cards by one of my favourite boutique stationery companies, Poppies For Grace, with sweet illustrations combined with their signature stitching and scalloped edges.

www.poppiesforgrace.com

If you really want to send a special message, particularly if it’s to a fellow stationery junkie like me, you can’t go past the tactile appeal of letterpress. Designer Meaghan Barbuto of Vince has just produced a new range of Christmas cards, including this simple card with its heart-warming message, or – my favourite – a letterpress message printed on recycled paper embedded with bottlebrush seeds. The card can be planted directly in the ground for a gift that keeps giving long after the Christmas decorations have been packed away.

www.vinceprinters.com.au