Christmas Card 2014

If you were nice this year you probably already received your Adams Family Christmas card in the mail by now. But if you were naughty, you didn't.  So, this post is for the ones on the naughty list.

This year's Christmas card had a nautical theme.....

I cut up some of our old nautical charts for the background....

Then added a sprinkling of glitter.....

Then topped that with a sheet of plastic that had a compass rose printed on it.....

And sewed around the perimter with the sewing machine to adhere all the layers and trap the glitter for a "snow globe" effect......

  Once that was done I set to work making little paper boats....

 And the little paper flags for the little paper boats......

And the little paper masts to mount the little paper flags onto the little paper boats.

The paper boats were then glued to the cards along with some paper trees, and a metal brad was attached to the center of the compass rose....

 
Each card looked a little different.....each one was unique.

Finally, the good tidings were stamped in the inside of the card using white ink.

And all of the cards were done in time for Christmas....that's the real miracle!

Here is a photo of what my cat thought of all the craftiness going on around here....

 "Hey, pay attention to me! This is mine.....all mine! And that...that's mine too."

And here is a copy of the letter that was enclosed with each card....

This year’s Christmas card is made using pieces of our old nautical charts. Today we navigate with modern, computerized electronics, but there was a day when the paper navigational chart was one of the most important pieces of equipment on the boat! When we bought our first boat we had very little navigational equipment….a compass, and a depth sounder, and a few charts. Those paper charts meant EVERYTHING to us as we wandered around the vast ocean. Every mariner now has a pile of old charts stashed in the back of their closet. As I was sitting in my crafting room making these cards, I started noticing little interesting things on the charts.

At first I was just fascinated with all of the interesting names for the bays and points of land….some of the names are just crazy-weird, and you have to wonder how in the world they got to be called that! There truly is a story for every single rock and harbor on these charts. “Someone hit a rock here and sunk their boat.” “Someone went aground there, but they waited for high tide and got off okay.”  “I saw a weird sea creature in this bay and no one believes me!”  “We rode out a tremendous storm in this harbor and I was so glad to be safe!” There are literally thousands of these stories….happy stories, amazing stories, and very sad stories.

Some of the charts are in perfect condition, and some of them are creased and wrinkled. Many mariners folded their charts and stored them in drawers in the pilot house, and after years of use the creases turned into tears which necessitated the inevitable use of Scotch Tape. If your boat was big enough, the charts could be stored in large banks of shallow drawers, open and flat without being folded - but that was a luxury that most of us didn’t have. As for us, we kept our charts rolled up like scrolls and then we stored them above our heads between the beams in the ceiling. Everyday wear and tear did a fair amount of damage too….. coffee stains, rips and tears, and blood can be seen on some of the pieces. You can see that many times a chart was gripped by someone that was worried about something….where to fish, which way to go to get out of the weather, or how close they were to the rocks in unfamiliar territory…the list is endless, but I know that many of the wrinkles were put into the charts by a mariner that was wringing their hands agonizing about what to do.

Any important information about an area would be noted directly on the chart. I found all sorts of marks showing compass and loran readings and flashing buoy light sequence rates. And there are little notes that say, “Oysters,” or “Fast tides,” or “Good Anchorage,” too. This information was either learned the hard way or was passed down by an experienced mariner to a less experienced mariner.  A lot of this information was considered “top secret” and it was a great breach of security if someone snooped through your charts.

Even though the paper charts are basically obsolete, I found it very moving to hold them and think about what they meant to the mariners of the past, and wanted to share of piece of history with you as we wish you a… VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS, from “Our snug harbor to yours!”   Dale and Lori Adams

photo circa 1986