In Part One, we unleashed twelve cats on Christmas.

Trees were climbed. Baubles were destroyed. Presents were prematurely opened. A gingerbread house suffered a mysterious structural failure.

But The Twelve Cats of Christmas wasn’t really just an idea about cats.

It was an idea about collections.

Instead of creating one card, finishing it and immediately looking for an entirely new concept, what happens if you stop and ask:

Could this idea become a series?

That simple question can turn one promising design into an entire group of related cards.

Change the Animal

The easiest way to explore the idea is simply to change the star.

The Twelve Dogs of Christmas

Dogs provide entirely different possibilities.

A Labrador steals Christmas dinner.

A terrier disappears into a mountain of wrapping paper.

A dachshund wears an absurdly long Christmas jumper.

A guilty-looking dog sits beside an empty plate that previously contained cookies for Santa.

Possible text:

Santa, we need to talk about the cookies.

Dear Santa, define “naughty.”

I didn’t eat the Christmas dinner. I rescued it.

Christmas calories don’t count if they fall on the floor.

The Twelve Mice of Christmas

Go smaller.

Tiny mice could wrap matchbox presents, decorate miniature trees, steal crumbs from the Christmas pudding or hitch a ride in Santa’s sleigh.

Possible text:

Have yourself a merry little Christmas.

Christmas is made of little things.

Not a creature was stirring…

Except, apparently, these twelve.

The Twelve Sheep of Christmas

This one comes with a ready-made supply of terrible puns, which naturally makes it irresistible.

Fleece Navidad.

All I want for Christmas is ewe.

Season’s bleatings.

Baa humbug.

But you don’t have to stop at puns.

Imagine twelve increasingly chaotic sheep attempting to stage their own Christmas nativity play.

That could become a collection all by itself.

The Twelve Penguins of Christmas

Scarves. Snow. Ice. Presents. Christmas sweaters.

Penguins arrive practically pre-decorated for the season.

Have an ice Christmas.

Waddle I do without you?

It’s beginning to look a lot like Fishmas.

Or make the humor visual and let the sentiment remain traditional.

And Then Keep Going

Highland cows.

Rabbits.

Frogs.

Bears.

Capybaras.

Raccoons.

Hedgehogs.

Chickens.

Goats.

Or forget choosing one species and create The Twelve Pets of Christmas.

Each card could feature a completely different animal encountering the same strange human Christmas traditions for the first time.

It Doesn’t Have to Be an Animal

Once you start thinking in collections, the possibilities become much wider.

The Twelve Gnomes of Christmas could give each gnome a different seasonal responsibility.

One wraps presents.

One bakes cookies.

One decorates the tree.

One has clearly been sampling the mulled wine.

The Twelve Snowmen of Christmas could feature twelve different snow characters, occupations or unfortunate festive situations.

The Twelve Skeletons of Christmas could attempt normal seasonal activities despite their lack of skin, muscles and functioning digestive systems.

Imagine one sitting beside an enormous Christmas dinner.

I’ve been waiting all year for this.

Or a skeleton in a Christmas jumper:

Does this make me look bony?

The structure provides consistency while the individual scenes provide the surprise.

Create a Cast, Not Just a Collection

Another approach is to develop recurring characters.

Think about the personalities hiding inside your illustrations.

Perhaps your Christmas series contains:

the optimist who loves everything about Christmas,

the grump who wants January to arrive immediately,

the perfectionist decorating every branch,

the chaotic helper undoing everything,

the overeater,

the procrastinator wrapping gifts on Christmas Eve,

and the exhausted character who has simply fallen asleep underneath the tree.

These personalities can work with cats, dogs, gnomes, monsters, snowmen or humans.

Better still, customers may recognize themselves, friends or family members in them.

That gives you possibilities beyond a general Christmas card.

The grumpy character might become a Christmas card for a brother.

The Christmas perfectionist might work for Mom.

The exhausted character could become a card for a coworker.

One collection can begin branching into relationships and recipients.

Use a Visual System

A series doesn’t mean creating the same card twelve times.

The scenes should change, but something should tell us that these designs belong together.

That might be:

• one decorative frame
• consistent typography
• a recurring color palette
• the same illustration style
• a repeated title treatment
• a numbered badge
• the same background structure

Think of it as giving your collection its own little visual universe.

A customer doesn’t have to see all twelve cards together to understand one design.

But if they encounter another one later, there should be a tiny moment of recognition:

I’ve seen one of these before.

Number Them

If the collectible element suits your style, make it visible.

A small corner detail could say:

Christmas Cat No. 4

The Twelve Dogs of Christmas • No. 7

or

Christmas Skeleton No. 9: The Dinner Incident

The numbering itself becomes part of the joke and encourages the viewer to imagine the designs they haven’t encountered yet.

And there is no rule saying the collection has to stop after one Christmas.

Perhaps next year brings:

The Twelve Cats of Christmas: 2027 Collection

Same visual identity.

Twelve completely new crimes.

A Series Doesn’t Have to Be Funny

The same strategy can produce beautiful or sentimental collections.

Imagine twelve woodland animals travelling through a snowy forest, each carrying a different Christmas gift.

Twelve birds gathering around the same decorated tree.

Twelve cozy cats sleeping in different Christmas settings.

Twelve angels representing different Christmas wishes.

Twelve winter cottages, each with a different scene glowing through the windows.

The sentiments might be gentle rather than humorous:

May Christmas find you somewhere warm and wonderful.

Wishing you quiet moments, cozy corners and people who feel like home.

May your Christmas be filled with small comforts and gentle joys.

The collection method works just as well for elegant, sentimental, religious, vintage, cute or contemporary cards as it does for comedy.

Look at Cards You’ve Already Made

Here’s where this exercise becomes particularly useful.

You don’t necessarily need to start with a new idea.

Look through your existing Christmas designs.

Is there one character you particularly enjoyed creating?

One visual joke that could have several variations?

One illustration style that deserves a larger family?

One card that customers responded particularly well to?

Instead of asking yourself to invent something completely new, take that existing idea and ask:

What are the other eleven?

You may discover that you’ve already created the beginning of a collection without realizing it.

One Idea, Twelve Opportunities

Of course, twelve isn’t a magic number.

Make three.

Make six.

Make eight.

Make twenty-four and turn the idea into an Advent collection.

The important creative exercise isn’t the number.

It’s learning to recognize when an idea has more room inside it.

If you’ve drawn a Christmas cat tangled in fairy lights, perhaps you’ve already discovered a character.

What else would that character do?

What other Christmas traditions could go catastrophically wrong?

Could the same structure work with another animal?

Could those characters become birthday cards later?

Could the visual system become a recognizable collection across several occasions?

A strong card idea doesn’t always have to end when the card is finished.

Sometimes you’ve only made Card No. 1.

Happy Designing!

Corrie

One Christmas cat knocking a bauble off the tree is funny.

Twelve Christmas cats, each responsible for an entirely different seasonal catastrophe?

Now you have a collection.

“The Twelve Cats of Christmas” is a simple Christmas card series idea: create twelve individual designs using the same visual framework, but give each cat its own festive scene, personality and disaster.

Think of it as The Twelve Days of Christmas, rewritten by creatures who absolutely cannot be trusted around decorations.

Build a Family of Cards

Before creating the individual designs, decide what will make them instantly recognizable as belonging together.

You might use the same decorative border, typography, illustration style and color palette throughout the collection. You could also add a small recurring title or number:

The Twelve Cats of Christmas • No. 3

or

Christmas Cat No. 8: The Gingerbread Incident

But there’s one important rule: every card should still work independently.

A customer doesn’t need to know that Cat No. 7 exists to appreciate Cat No. 8 sitting innocently beside the ruins of a gingerbread village.

The collection is the bonus, not the explanation.

So what might our twelve festive offenders actually get up to?

1. The Christmas Tree Climber

There was a perfectly respectable Christmas tree here five minutes ago.

Now there is a cat halfway up it.

Front:
O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree…

Inside:
…you never stood a chance.

Or:

Front:
I helped decorate the tree.

Inside:
Apparently “helped” is open to interpretation.

2. The Bauble Assassin

One cat. One paw. One shiny ornament dangerously close to the edge.

Front:
I haven’t touched it.

Inside:
Yet.

Or simply:

All I want for Christmas is gravity.

3. The Wrapping-Paper Wrecker

The present was beautifully wrapped.

Was.

Now the cat is sitting in a mountain of shredded paper.

Front:
Your present arrived pre-opened.

Inside:
It’s a premium service.

4. The Tinsel Incident

A cat emerges triumphantly from an unreasonable quantity of Christmas decoration.

Front:
Deck the halls.

Inside:
Instructions unclear.

5. The Christmas Dinner Inspector

The roast turkey has been left unattended for approximately 0.7 seconds.

This was a mistake.

Front:
Christmas Dinner Quality Control Department

Inside:
Your meal has been thoroughly inspected.

Or:

Front:
I was only checking the turkey.

Inside:
You’re welcome.

6. The Stocking Occupier

Forget filling the stocking.

There is already a cat in it.

Front:
Santa brought you something special.

Inside:
It bites.

7. The Light-Tangler

A cat is completely wrapped in Christmas lights and looks enormously pleased with the result.

Front:
Be the light of Christmas.

Inside:
Or get hopelessly tangled in it. Either works.

Or:

I decorated myself.

8. The Gingerbread Destroyer

A beautifully constructed gingerbread house has become a gingerbread archaeological site.

The cat knows nothing.

Obviously.

Front:
There appears to have been a structural failure.

Inside:
No witnesses.

Or:

Front:
Gingerbread House: 0
Cat: 1

9. The Present Box Squatter

The expensive gift is somewhere nearby.

The box, however, is occupied.

Front:
Best present ever.

Inside:
Thanks for the box.

Or:

You shouldn’t have.

10. The Santa Impersonator

Santa hat.

Extremely unimpressed cat.

Front:
He sees you when you’re sleeping.

Inside:
Mostly because you’ve taken his side of the bed.

Or:

Front:
Santa Claws is coming to town.

Inside:
You have been warned.

11. The Christmas Card Saboteur

Someone is attempting to write Christmas cards.

Someone else is sprawled across the desk, sitting on the envelopes and attacking the pen.

Front:
Your Christmas card was delayed.

Inside:
Management regrets nothing.

Or:

Helping with the Christmas cards since 3:17 PM.

12. The Angel on Top

After eleven cards of festive destruction, our final cat has achieved its ultimate goal.

The summit.

It sits triumphantly at the top of the Christmas tree where the angel should be.

Front:
And on the twelfth day of Christmas…

Inside:
…the cat finally conquered the tree.

Or:

Front:
Move over, angel.

Inside:
Christmas has new management.

Make Them Your Cats

You don’t necessarily need twelve different cats.

One recurring character getting into twelve different predicaments could make the collection even more recognizable.

Or create a whole cast.

Perhaps there’s the climber, the thief, the glutton, the diva, the grump, the nervous one, the elderly cat who has seen all this before and the innocent-looking kitten who is clearly the mastermind behind everything.

Now you’re not simply creating twelve pictures of cats.

You’re creating personalities.

And customers may start recognizing their own pets in particular designs.

“That is absolutely Oliver.”

Suddenly one card in a twelve-card collection feels surprisingly personal.

And Why Stop at Cats?

You shouldn’t.

Because while The Twelve Cats of Christmas gives us a wonderfully chaotic starting point, the bigger idea hiding behind it is much more useful.

What happens when you take one strong card concept and deliberately turn it into a collection?

Dogs could do it.

Sheep could do it.

Mice could do it.

Christmas gnomes could do it.

Even twelve festive skeletons could attempt Christmas traditions despite some fairly obvious anatomical disadvantages.

And that’s where we’ll go tomorrow in Part Two.

Because sometimes the most interesting question to ask after finishing a card isn’t:

“What should I design next?”

It’s:

“What if this isn’t finished yet?”

Happy Designing!

Corrie