reviewing all the art I made for mail club! ✦💌🎨📒✏️ (2025 edition) (Patreon)

hello hello! °˖✧◝(⁰▿⁰)◜✧˖°

to round out the year, let's do a retrospective on the art I made for this year's mail club! 2025 was A TIME in terms of my personal life. as I've waxed about in numerous posts, art and life are inexplicably intertwined. not that I've ever been particularly adept at compartmentalizing, so it was inevitable that the events of the year trickled into the way I approached making art. I grappled with a lot of questions about how and why I do things and I'm grateful I had art as an outlet to process those changes and share them with you all!

★ 2024 mail club review ★

postcards from 2025:

stickers from 2025:

aren't they a beaut~

ahem, as I was saying, what immediately jumps out to me is the evolution in color. the first half of the year was filled with bright, saturated hues, while the second half started to mellow out with more dusty earth tones. it's no coincidence that I started using traditional art supplies more than digital tools after my back injury (back injury mentioned!!!) and I think that had a larger affect on my art than I realized. I became more accustomed to the limitations of color with traditional mediums and the art I made became infused with more neutrals as I learned about paint mixing and color theory.

another thing I notice is the shift in line and shape. my edges grew increasingly round as I strove for a softer, more fluid look to the art I made. I've generally found myself more inspired by loose, abstract art lately and I think that has bled into what I've been making. I also fell in LOVE with texture this year, another byproduct of making traditional art. I employed a variety of techniques from editing digital brushes to collage with scanned paintings to push the amount of texture I could create.

I of course have my favorites (though if you ask publicly I love all my children equally...). out of the postcards, January, May, and October feel the most cohesive to me overall. as for the stickers, April, September, and December jump out to me. I experimented more with form this year with stickers, particularly with borders and frames. I try to push my comfort zone each month by applying new techniques and styles I've learned and I think that naturally comes together every few months.

freebies from 2025:

this year, I experimented with printing stickers myself at home with low-cost and quick turnaround. I love designing stickers for the mail club, but it's a much more involved process that requires me to work with a manufacturer, lead times, printing specifications, higher costs, etc. printing small silly stickers at home and including them as freebies with the mail club was a low-pressure way for me to try new things without having to sell them, play around and have fun with weird/random designs.

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wow, what a year of art! it goes without saying that none of this would be possible without your support, so thank you so much for being here for any amount of time this past year. I'm so grateful I get to make art for a living and I'm excited to see what I'll learn and create in 2026! I'd really like to share more process and wips moving forward, because I'm realizing I benefit so much from other artists' generosity of experience. life itself is just one giant learning process and I want to be a part of the ongoing conversation of trying, learning, sharing, and so on and so forth~

what were your favorites from this year? let me know in the comments which postcard and sticker was your favorite! :D

wishing you a happy new year,

✦ vicki