Years ago when I had a paying job, I sent out birthday cards to the friends and relatives on my prayer list. I bought cards by the box full.
When I moved back home however, to care for my parents, I had no guaranteed income and resolved to make my own cards, and write my own verses for a year. I was sure that would be enough time to develop a new skill to add to my writers' resume.
Remember those well-laid plans of mice and men?
I got hooked. I'd be making one design, and decide it looked pretty good, so I'd make a few more just like it, and begin to see ways to improve it. Or try another variation. A different colour, a different texture.
Since ideas drop from my scalp like dandruff, once I get going at making greeting cards, it is hard to stop. Half an hour into a session the ideas really begin to perk. Like a caffeine addict, I know where I want to be for the next couple of hours.
I've never had an art lesson in my life, and though I've always wanted to sketch and draw, it took too many tries, to get one I thought I'd give to someone else. So part of my drive was to use unique art clipped from other sources, or glue on cute attachments, so recipients wouldn't notice I hadn't really done any drawing.
When I got my first computer I plunged into printing out custom designs and quickly discovered my own distaste rising for those phoney-looking efforts. I went back to my hand-made cards.
From time to time my soul sighs to make a perfect card. One that really shouts what I believe and live by, that shows love for the recipient, and doesn't take so-o much time to make! Yes, my elusive perfect card with class, wisdom, emotion, and cheap-production.
Then I tell myself, "Look, if I could design such a perfect card, and get say... 100 or more made up, I could use it all year long for birthday, sympathy cards, or thank you notes, whatever."
"I don't have time for this!" I moan. "I'm a business woman now, for pity's sake."
Some days, bossy Reason pats me on the shoulder and says, "You know it'll never happen. Be sensible."
But then, while I'm making a card for so-and-so, (I care, and can't afford an armload of roses), I get another idea - and I exclaim to myself, "Hey, that one could work! Try a few of those!"
Or, in the last year or two, someone from a special school, has been dropping off armloads of rolls of coloured paper at our church. Since I'm working in the Resource room, I get to tidy them up, and arrange them in boxes so that the Sunday School teachers can easily see and choose. But there are wasted scraps, so I bring them home, - because they inspire more ideas for that perfect card. All I need is some more hours to try out new designs and methods.
There's no guarantee of that elusive perfect card, but these second-rate cards are not that hard to look at either. Maybe it's time to put them into a book to inspire others. Maybe, while I work on that, the perfect design - for this year at least, will come to me!
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Ruth Marlene Friesen makes friends wherever she goes!
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Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada