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Spotlight On Animal Cards
Inset: Lemony, cat assistant at Fasanian Artistry.
There’s been no ‘pawcity’ of flamingos, llamas and raccoons on animal greeting cards recently, running with the herd of familiar furry-eared, claw-owning wild beasts, doe-eyed farm residents, feathered, perching personalities and tail wagging or purring whiskered pets. With a massive menagerie of animal card publishers nourishing the British public’s love of all creatures great and small, a small ‘pack’ reveal their special encounter with nature’s fauna. Laura Clamp, founder of Flying Teaspoons: “Growing up in the industrial city of Stoke-on-Trent doesn’t quite provide you with the best encyclopaedia of birds from which to draw inspiration. A walk through the town will offer up the occasional seagull and about a 500489 pigeons which have a tendency to wait until the last second before flying up right into your face. So there’s no surprise that my first range of cards featured these rather funny birds with all their strutting and cooing... and it turns Above: One of the 500489 pigeons in out that a lot of people actually Stoke-on-Trent, recreated in paper collage by Flying Teaspoons. love them! There’s something ironic about turning the overlooked, common grey pigeon into a piece of art made from hundreds of coloured paper and I think that’s why people think the cards are so funny. They’re mischievous and charismatic and make up some of my best selling designs, so I should probably admire them by now, but I still give them a wide birth in the street!”
Kathy Webster, artist and founder of Dotty Dog Art: “We have a rescue dog called Dandy, who is a total poppet but goes to pieces if anyone raises their voice. Dandy will carefully pick up a piece of recycling out of our recycling bin, but once he knows that we’ve spotted him, and just incase anyone is even thinking about raising their voice to him, he dashes off only to return moments later empty-mouthed. Little did we realise that he was creating a stash of recycling in our garden. I’m sure our neighbours think we throw our recycling straight out of the kitchen window! So to try and break this ‘littering’ habit we now all praise Dandy when he shows up with a piece of recycling! (Crazy right?) This has stopped him running off to the garden to litter and now he thinks he is being super clever bringing us the recycling! Oh, he’s trained us so well!” Above: Dotty Dog Art’s illustrations are created with love and are full of character as a homage to our quirky canine friends who brighten our days and make us smile.
Rebekka Somogyi, co-founder of Fasanian Artistry: "A few years ago I adopted a cat. I called her Lemony, after Keith Lemon, because she has a big ginger moustache. She hated all other animals and humans. Nobody would dare touch her as she got known for scratching anyone who got too close. After a while, we became friends and she grew very loyal to me and me alone. One day, when I was looking across our neighbour’s large fields, I saw Lemony walking alongside some hedges. The weirdest thing was, just a few feet behind her, a group of five or six male pheasants were following her! Every time she Above: A ‘fowl’ play on words on a Fasanian Artistry design. stopped, they stopped too. Once in a while she’d turn around, glaring at them. It would have been nice to think she actually made friends for once, but even from that distance I could see her swearing at them to just leave her alone."
PROGRESSIVE GREETINGS WORLDWIDE
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