Greetings!

I grew up in a household where everything that could me made by hand usually was made by hand. My dad was the manly, tool-wielding one and built us rooms, decks, and treehouses to play in, and my mom was both crafty and a master of the culinary arts. She tried to cook everything from scratch, which was often quite successful (homemade pizzas for my junior high friends every Friday night– I’m so popular!), but sometimes fell flat (way-too-crunchy/wholesome bran muffins baked with the pulp left over from the juicing machine… nasty.)

When special occasions came around, you could bet that our household would be circulating handmade cards. Birthdays, anniversaries, Christmas, Halloween, Easter, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, whatever! Everybody gets a handmade card!! As soon as our chubby little fingers were coordinated enough to grasp a crayon for sustained periods of time, my mom taught us the value of making heartfelt cards by ourselves instead of schlepping to the Hallmark store and giving somebody a tacky, prefabricated, overpriced piece of folded card stock. We learned our lessons diligently and automatically turned to the stack of white card stock and Magic Markers in my mom’s studio office whenever something special was coming up.

My mom and I don’t live in the same city anymore, but she still sends me achingly gorgeous (handmade, obviously) postcards quite frequently, even if there’s no officially-sanctioned Special Occasion on the horizon. Her penmanship is exquisite, her sense of design and style are impeccable, and it is clear whenever one of these beauties lands in my mailbox that my mom has spent scads of precious time creating this.

I’ll admit it: seeing these postcards from my mom always fills me with waves of gratitude and appreciation but also afflicts me with stabbing twinges of guilt. ‘Why so guilty?’, you might ask: ‘There’s no need to compare your own, lovingly handmade creations with the artistic masterpieces of your uber-talented mother.’

But times have changed, dear readers.

Boxes of store-bought cards now sit in my apartment where the stack of card stock used to be. And in place of my glitter, glue, and Crayola Markers, I’ve basically got a ballpoint pen that waits impatiently on my desk to scribble out a poignant one-liner (if that): “Happy birthday, so-and-so! Love, Dana L. xoxo”

Whatever could have changed to send me skulking to the Greeting Card Store under the cover of darkness and the cloak of anonymity?

First and foremost, cherished readers, I got tired of coming up with artistic and meaningful drawings to grace the covers of my handmade cards. (Also, my ideas for cards rapidly outgrew my ability to translate them into decent sketches, if you know what I’m saying. Essentially: I suck at art.)

Secondly, along came a giant store called Michael’s, where crafty people of all types could suddenly congregate and collect a wide assortment of greeting card paraphernalia. There were ribbons, origami papers, embossers, stencils, lettered stickers, brads, beads, cut-out stamps, and way too many other things now available to the handmade card creator, and my letter-sized white card stock folded in half and coloured on effectively paled by comparison.

Thirdly: I lost the motivation required to keep up with Greeting Card-Making Joneses. Yes, I still appreciate and treasure a good handmade card, but I’m not about to get competitive with these Martha Stewarts now and attempt to out-embellish a card template in an ever-escalating display of one-upmanship. I challenge thee to a Greeting Card Make-Off! Or not.

What it comes down to is this: I still have a soft spot for greeting cards (of all types– handmade or not). Who doesn’t love getting non-bills in the mail? I’m also a big believer that it’s best to have an assorted stock of greeting cards on hand, ready to spring into heartfelt action at a moment’s notice. Special occasions have a remarkable ability to creep up on you unexpectedly, after all, and like the Girl Scouts always say: It’s best to be prepared.

Of course, there are downsides to being over-prepared with an abundance of pre-bought greeting cards. These are:

1. You can only send a specific type of greeting card to each of your friends once. (e.g. Although it’s a sweet design, nobody appreciates getting the same “Birds on a Branch” card from you over and over again, for multiple occasions over numerous months/years.)

2. Everyone (eternally popular or not) has a finite, rather limited set of friends. And after you’ve sent a “Birds on a Branch” card to every one of your friends, you might still have 5 of these special cards left over in your collection. You see the problem?

So here’s what I propose, dear readers: A Greeting Card Swap. I have a ton of greeting cards and postcards at my place that have all but fulfilled their heart-warming duties to my particular circle of friends. Maybe some of you could use these (new, blank inside) cards to give to your friends, in exchange for sending me some unused greeting cards or postcards of your own that you no longer need. We can all diversify our greeting card collections and practice sustainability and recycling at the same time! YES!

Here are sample images of what I can offer you. If any of these cards interest you, give me a shout in the comments or e-mail me directly and we can figure something out! (PS: I’m not picky about the cards I get in return, so long as they are not gag/joke cards… you know the ones: naked women, old men, farts, and over the hill jokes are ALL OFF LIMITS. Those supposedly ‘funny’ cards irritate and often enrage me beyond reason. To the point of open hostility and aggression.)

Anyway:

Vintage butterfly postcards. Blank on the back; don't come with envelopes.

Cats! Yoga! What more can you need? Postcard-style, not greeting cards (again, no envelopes). Tori: don't blame me for the nightmares you'll get tonight.

Assorted Charley Harper nature postcards (no envelopes). Angular, minimalist, and pretty cool if you ask me.

Gallop! Scanimation cards in horse, dog, cat, and eagle varieties. Blank inside. Come with stickers to customize the front (e.g. "Congratulations!" or "Happy Birthday!") Also come with envelopes. (PS: "Scanimation" means that they appear to move when you hold the pictures at different angles, kind of like a hologram. The animals run and fly when you move the card. NEAT-O!)

Imagine greeting cards for the wannabe Buddhist in all of us. These cards come with envelopes and are blank on the inside. That said, each card has one of four zen messages printed on the front-- you can choose your non-violent weapon: 1. "Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in giving creates love.", 2. "With our thoughts we make the world.", 3. "Everything changes, nothing remains without change.", or 4. "Music in the soul can be heard by the universe."

YES! Pulp postcard collection (no envelopes). Choose from: 1. Pardon My Body, 2. Blondes Don't Cry, 3. I'll Bury My Dead, 4. Nine to Five, 5. Virgin with Butterflies, or 6. The Dark Page: Murder at Lonely Hearts

Vintage RCMP cards, for the old school, patriotic Canadian in all of us. Blank inside and come with envelopes. Seriously, even if you're not Canadian, these cards should be appreciated for their vintage, heroic poster quality. The RCMP are iconic!

Cute and sweet birds on branches, only a few left. Blank inside and come with envelopes.

Greeting cards also come in pink and blue. Blank inside and come with envelopes.

Some of my favourite postcards ever: full vintage comic book covers on the front and transparent close-up scenes on the back. Name your superhero-- a ton of selection, but no envelopes because these are postcards.

So what do you say? Anybody interested in a heartfelt, meaningful swap of prefabricated, mass-produced greeting cards? Let’s do it!