Vinegar Valentine - Penny Dreadful - Callous Greeting - Mean Card

It has always seemed an unfortunate element of society that every year things get just a little fluffier. The toys children play with have fewer small parts and more rounded edges, the words we use are in spoken and written word become less direct, the media we watch is a little more politically correct. It follows that our greeting cards consistently become happier and more cheerful which on the grand scheme of things isn’t such a bad thing.

Things used to be different in the greeting card market however. Have you ever heard of a penny dreadful valentine? They’re insulting and mean greeting cards for the romance season that were originally distributed back in the mid 1800s’. Incredibly insulting, especially for their time, these cards were usually sent anonymously. The best part of the whole thing was that Sir Rowland Hills’ administration of prepaid postage didn’t begin in Britain until the 1840s’ so in many places people were still being charged when they received mail rather than sent it. So you could easily have just paid the post man for an anonymous insult.

Nowadays you can find a number of different online card retailers who are selling mean greeting cards. These are the present day Penny Dreadfuls’, though certainly not limited to Valentines Day. Some of them are crude, some sly and witty, some with great artwork and others with pictures that seem cherry picked from many unreferenced sources. You will find free e-cards, paid for e-cards, cards that can be downloaded and those that can even be mailed to the address of your target.

Truly has the Penny Dreadful become more sophisticated.

Site Approaching Completion

We've moved into the final testing stages of site production. Barring a few outages here and there due to database work and syntax testing, the site is essentially ready to go. From there, its just artwork and then marketing.

Art Concepts Ready

Revamp of the site to fix many of the problems made by being a newb webdeveloper. Got a slideshow of the cast up on the site now and am mostly back to where I was. At this point it's really just a matter of the individual card art.

First picture

So I'm missing just the dog. Character is complete, just waiting on the final scan now. Here are the other 4 characters. As is obvious enough, these characters will comprise the basis for each greeting card. Through their misfortune and antics will miserable life events be celebrated.

Cards Cards Cards

I've got 4 of 5 characters finished by my artist and card concepting has begun. It's interesting not being art endowed in any way to work with some of these images. I hope people enjoy these cards as much as I've enjoyed creating them.

Going to post some concept characters tonight so anyone who reads this can see what they look like.

Site Building - Here we go

Initial website build is up running Magento cart. Have had a few technical glitches along the way but nothing too bad. Still on schedule for a mid january release. My artist has nearly finished all of the character concepts so we should have some art up on the site in the next 2 weeks. Title blocks and such. I love the characters.

Barring major technical difficulties we should be ready for Valentines. As is unfortunately often the case, not everyone has a good valentines day, and we aim to be there to help those who haven't.

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www.callousgreetings.com