It all began in 2018 when we noticed a greeting card for sale in the village shop. A local artist had reproduced his landscape painting as a card. We felt this was just the idea we needed to help an older member of our family who was having a very tough time. There were several portfolios under her bed full of her artwork, that was just waiting to be made into greeting cards. So we took a few of the designs home and began to experiment.
Our first greeting cards
At first, we scanned the designs into our Macbook and printed them on some ready-made A6 card stock that we had once used for some photographs. They were very old but still produced a pleasing image. Then we decided to try a larger size of card. A local printer very kindly gave us some instruction on card types and coatings. We went ahead and invested in a bulk delivery of matte white card. This made our designs look much brighter.
We began to refine our processes and our collection of card designs expanded. But fairly soon, we hit a problem. One wet day in summer 2018, we had placed some of the cards on a windowsill. Drops of rain splashed onto one of them through the slightly open window. And to our surprise, where the water landed, the ink was washed away. Our dye-based inks were not waterproof!
By this time, our local village cafe had shown an interest in stocking our greeting cards. We realised we needed to print the cards with pigment inks that could repel water. This meant investing in a new printer. We took the plunge and soon we were producing lovely greeting cards printed with Epson HD pigment inks. These began to sell very well in the cafe.
Learning to print borderless cards
The next challenge was to learn how to print borderless cards. It was very much a process of ‘trial and error’ for us, with more wastage than we liked. But eventually, we overcame the technical issues and began to produce reliable results. Soon our borderless cards became popular and sold well.
We produced new collections of cards regularly, introducing a new range of twelve fresh card designs every two months. Each time we thought we had come to the end of the designs we could use from the portfolios, we had fresh inspiration. We found new formats and ideas to develop other paintings in our family portfolios. So our range grew, and so did our ability to digitise, edit and print original vintage artwork. Sometimes, the original designs had suffered damage, and two designs had been lost completely. But with our developing skills, they could all be retrieved digitally and given a new lease of life.
Needless to say, seeing her long-forgotten designs in print gave our elderly relative great encouragement. It was something nice for her to think about in a dark time. We had lots of design discussions and meetings in the cafe, with her beautiful cards on sale at the counter. She also began to paint fresh designs, and found a new purpose to her life even though she was in her eighties!