Idea!

[sarasvati]

Do you know what the world needs more of? Unconventional greeting cards.

It's true. I can go into any store that sells greeting cards and find 101 cards that wish me a happy birthday or a merry Christmas or congratulations on graduating or commiserations on the death of my grandfather. What I can't find are cards that I'm actually looking for. If I want a card, I usually have to either make them myself or settle for some generic thing that doesn't express properly what I want it to say.

Then there are the annoying gender-specific cards. For children, males get the cards with Thomas the Tank Engine and Hot Wheels, and girls get My Little Pony and Barbie. And given that they all use gender signs on the cards ("Barbie wishes you a happy birthday, little girl!"), what is one supposed to do when they have a four years old girl who loves playing with cars rather than playing dress-up in princess clothes? Adults don't fare much better. For women, there are time-honoured jokes about shopping sprees and lying about age, and men gets hot ladies and tools. I saw a birthday card once, intended to be from the father of a girl just turning 18, which made jokes about how the girl always spends way too much of daddy's money on clothes and perfume. Yes, funny, ha ha, but where are the cards for girls who don't fit the norm? Where are the cards for boys who don't fit the norm?

Where are the cards for non-mainstream (in the West, anyway) or non-Christian holidays? I'm not just talking about a card that says Samhain instead of Halloween, or Yule instead of Christmas. What about a simple card that celebrates the fact that the seasons are changing? You can find greeting cards from pets, so long as you have a cat or a dog. Mom has a parrot and you think it'll be great to get her a birthday card from the parrot? Too bad, you're out of luck.

Or how about a card for people who are/were like parents to you without actually being parents? Or the friend who's so close they could be a sibling, but the situation isn't one in which this sentiment is appropriate?

Hell, where are the cards that say, "Cthulhu will devour your soul!" I know a few people who would get the biggest kick out of that!

I can't be the only person who goes looking for greeting cards only to be disappointed by the fact that neither I nor the intended recipient fit the molds that the cards define for us.

So why not make them? Not just for myself, but for others who are looking for something special but can't find it elsewhere? Even traditional sentiments with a unique touch could be appreciated, so that you're not giving everyone the same thing you gave everyone else last year and the year before it.

I may have just found my niche? I have designs in my head for quite a few cards that have printed images on them, or fancy text, but I also have ideas for more artistic cards, like some with little images sewn on the front instead, or more abstract one incorporating different art styles. I'm sure I could sell a few of them at the local craft fair around the winter holidays, and it's possible I might be able to convince a few friends with local businesses to stick up an ad or two for me, too, for more year-round designs.

Time to get out of graph paper and sketchbook and start designing!

Comments

[gehayi]

Come to think of it, you're right. I remember all those cards covered with pink and sparkles and whatnot, and I was not a pink-and-sparkles kind of girl. As I recall, when I was four, I wanted to be a witch who had an outlaw's hideout in the Badlands and a pirate ship on the Spanish Main and who hunted dinosaurs in her spare time.

I still think that sounds like a better deal than Barbie's Dream House.