'Cosmic Christmas' Charity Cards
Hands up who loves Christmas?
ME ME ME ME, I do, I do, I love everything about it, which is why I have loved designing my Christmas card range.
The one thing I struggle with, however, is the amount of waste at the end of it. My dilemma with cards in particular, is, I love receiving them as the gesture is really sweet and if it's a well designed card, I keep it. The problem is most of the time the cards are cheap, not cheerful and mass-produced with new paper, printed by overseas manufacturers, which, as we are all aware of by now, doesn't do anything good for our beautiful planet, all those carbon footprints just lay desolate with the unwanted plastic and paper, stinking. Personally speaking, I believe we are in a day and age where it's a Designers/Artists/Illustrators and (especially) business owners responsibility to be proactive in thinking about ways to cut waste and most importantly plastic (it's not easy, but it is totally doable). There's enough information about what plastic is doing to our environment that I don't need to go into it, you will have seen it on Facebook or the news. Just type it in google if you have been hibernating. This is why I joined the Naked Card campaign and have gone completely plastic-free with packaging for this product and everything is recycled and/or can be recyclable/biodegradable. From washi tape to recycled tissue paper. Basically, if you slung them into a landfill, boxed up, they would break down relatively quickly, but lets hope you like the designs enough not to do that! Also a few other important things to note are that the cards, themselves, are part of the Carbon Capture Programme and are printed on quality recycled paper from a sustainable forest using an energy reducing printing company that print with vegtable-based inks. WOAH, mouthful! but pretty impressive, right?
I don't want to go on and on but if you would like the finer details please see below:
More on the Carbon Capture Programme HERE
More on the Naked Card campaign HERE
And naturally, everything is sourced, printed and made in the UK.
The other thing I always struggle with as a small-fry Designer is ways to give back. When I was working in a Design room for a well-known High Street brand, a percentage of my wage voluntarily came out of my earnings every month to two Charities. I don't earn much as a 'work from home/full-time mum', actually thats a slight lie, (not about not earning much) but my son has started attending nursery for two mornings and has a full day at his Nanny's, but for almost three years it was just me, everyday, apart from 2 hours around mid-day whilst he was asleep, which is when I powered through orders and designs and in turn kept my foot in the door for my career. Anyway, mum's, you will feel my pain, it's bloody hard and I still don't earn much! (Yet). So it got me thinking about how I could give something back and one charity that really made a lasting impression on me recently was the Myton Hospice in Warwickshire. My Dad passed away 2 and a half years ago, just 6 hours after my youngest Nephew was born. He had, had a 4 year battle with Bowel Cancer which saw some highs and some real lows for all of us, as a family, in different ways. My Dad, Jan Porter, 62 spent his final weeks there in April 2016. It was a really emotional and traumatic experience driving every other day from London to Warwick with my 6 month old son to see my Dad go through the ageing process so quickly but to look at the experience with a 'glass half-full' attitude it was also a huge healing process after the past 4 years of uncertainty, which was made easier by the caring staff at Myton Hospice. I have spoken with the lovely people there and will donate 10% of the profit from these cards to this very worthy cause, it might not be a lot but it's something. I'm also offering up a day of Designing to a charity. That could be for a new logo or a pattern for their own cards, anything really, I am open to suggestions. It will have to be after Christmas as I'm three weeks off from giving birth to my second son...line up the glasses of red wine please. If you know of a charity that would benefit from my services please get in touch and I will pick one at the end of the year.
More on the Myton Hospice HERE
Here is a picture of my Dad...
And here are the 5 designs for my multipack of 10 x A6 Charity Cards.
Thanks
Samantha x
