Having looked around at various pieces of information on Easter I have found that there are strong symmetries between religion and folklore. It is easy to understand why the egg would symbolise spring being a new beginning, but in Christianity the egg also symbolises the resurrection. The events origins are different for different cultures, religions and countries but the celebrations and symbolism attached to them are all the same or very similar.

I have found a number of explanations regarding the egg hunt, one of them being that the custom was carried from Germany (where their Osterhase (a hare) would lay her eggs in baskets that German children would leave outside of their homes) to America. It is thought that once German immigrants arrived in America the activity transformed slowly into what it is now. I also read that the act of egg hunting came about around the time of the rise of Christianity over paganism. I have read two versions of this rumour, one suggesting Christians were persecuted by Pagans and one that said the opposite. According to the rumour, the victims who were either Christians or Pagans were found and persecuted for practising their religion. They celebrated their custom by burying eggs instead of exchanging them and were found by their tormentors who bribed children to look for eggs buried around homes and on land. When an egg was found, the owner of the land would then be persecuted for following Paganism/Christianity.

Today, this fun filled tradition is celebrated by people all over the world, unaware of what made their ancestors begin doing these things. It brings joy to so many people along with the rest of the vast array of modern day Easter practices which now includes sending of Easter e cards. I wonder what customs we will take with us into the future and what they will evolve into in years to come?

Katie x

The festive season is well and truly over. No more mince pies until next year. I hope you all had a terrific time with your loved ones and enjoyed some special times. We had a lovely family Christmas and a nice rest and I am now raring to get going on this years new ecards!

We have lots of cards planned for the next year, starting with a brand new Chinese New Year ecard which I hope you will enjoy.

Anyone tried out the new Facebook app yet? Let me know what you think of it, its a great way to send greetings out to people and I would like to know what you think of it.

Katie x

P.s. Send unlimited e cards for a small membership fee. Click here to join today.

As promised, here are a few snaps to help you get to know me and the rest of the team better.

Our office

First of all, here are two photographs of the Katies Cards office. The building with the bluey-grey ‘Engravers House’ sign above the window is the our office where all of our ecards are created. The building is a converted butchers shop and is bright and airy. There are 3 companies in the building altogether as well as my ceramics studio which was built at the back of the office.

The Katies Cards office

The office is in Teddington, a small and pretty town in Middlesex in the south of England. Its right next to a gorgeous park called Bushy park, where we go at lunch time and where I walk Plum.

The team

We are a small, close-knit team who enjoy working together to create our e cards in our lovely office in Teddington. We often listen to music in the office and because of Nick’s wide taste, usually leave the selection up to him. There are a few pubs nearby where every now and then we go to have a lovely pub lunch.

Nick

My husband Nick works with me to come up with ideas for new e cards and helps bring my drawings and paintings to life on the computer screen. He helped me to create my first e card for my Mum and has been instrumental in getting Katies Cards where it is now.

Prior to Katies Cards, Nick studied animation at University. Once qualified, he embarked on a successful 8 years as an animator before deciding to go it alone and use his skills to work as a freelance animator for TV and film, which was how we met Barry.

Nick has an eclectic taste in music and enjoys food, cycling, films and spending time with friends and family.

I am very lucky to be able to work alongside my husband who is extremely talented and committed to producing such high quality cards for you!

Barry

Barry is a talented illustrator who has worked with us to create our e-cards from a very early stage. He has made many of the backgrounds and characters you see in our collection and has also been instrumental in helping to shape the seeds of my ideas and come up with new ones!

He studied illustration at University and has since had a very successful 7 year career as an illustrator. When I asked him for some facts to write in the blog, he proudly told me that as a student, he designed the characters in a number 1 Playstation game called ‘Prisoner of war’ which is very impressive!

He is a keen follower of football and art and enjoys playing golf.

Racheal

Racheal is new to the team, having only joined us 1 month ago. She was brought on board to help us grow Katies Cards due to her 7 years experience in marketing for both large and small companies. Unusually for a marketer, Racheal actually studied Sculpture at University, but after completing the degree realised that she didn’t want to follow the creative path and went on a search to find the right career. After joining a small publishing company as a customer service advisor, she was quickly moved over to the marketing department and rose up the ranks. Since then she has worked for another large publishing company and a disability organisation, planning and implementing marketing campaigns and developing marketing strategies.

Racheal is a keen cook and a lover of all things food, fashion and interiors.

Me

You may already feel like you know a lot about me so i’ll try to keep it brief. I am Katie and I am the person who started this process 5 years ago. I am passionate about saving the environment and I am always on the look out for eco-friendly ideas, which is how I realised that there weren’t any good quality e cards to send to people five years ago when I was looking for an eco-friendly e card for my Mum’s birthday. I decided then to make my own e card, taking some time to make sure it was really good quality and I enjoyed it so much that I wanted to do more! I came up with some more ideas for Nick and I to get to work on and then planned how we could sell them to people on the internet. 18 months later we launched katiescards.com with just 25 cards and have steadily been adding more to the collection over the years – we now have over 160 in the collection for all sorts of occasions such as birthdays, Christmas, Easter, Valentine’s day, Mothers day, Fathers day, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Independance day, St Patrick’s day, engagement, wedding day, anniversary, new baby, new home, Canada day and many more!

Click on the link to see the first birthday e card that I created for my Mum (you can send this card also if you like it).

I love what I do and that I am able to combine the things that I love in my job – art, environmental issues and working with Nick. Like Racheal, I also studied Sculpture at University and after leaving went onto become an art director for film and TV. After becoming a mother, I decided I wanted to take a step back from my career so that I could bring up our children Molly and Joe. Now that the children are older and turning into young adults, I have more time and thats another reason Katies Cards came along at just the right time for me.

I enjoy tennis, art, film, traveling and spending time with friends and family. I also enjoy taking long walks with our Jack Russell Plum (who you will hear more about later). I love making e cards and genuinely wish to make you and your loved ones feel special when one of our cards is sent.

Plum (the office dog)

Me and Plum in Bushy park

Plum is our Jack Russell but we bring her to the office every day so that she doesn’t get lonely. We have a garden here that she enjoys running around (and terrorising next doors cats!) and because we are right next to the beautiful Bushy park, I can take her for good lunch time walks which she loves.

Plum

Plum is 5 years old, is great fun and a loving dog. She is, just as all Jack Russell’s are, she’s very stubborn and territorial and we often have moments when she goes completely crazy! But she is a great character and we love having her here in the office. She is also a brilliant source of inspiration and our walks together have been where alot of my ideas have formed.

She got her name when, at only a few days old, we took her to meet my mum. My mum has a Plum tree in her garden which some Plums had fallen off, and the new puppy picked one up in her mouth and brought it to me, dropping it at my feet. Out son Joe said ‘Plum’s a good name!’ and we all agreed!

Me and Plum in Bushy park

That’s it for now. I will keep updating you on our team news and add some more pictures so that you know what is happening here but I hope you feel you know all of us a bit more now.

Hope you’re all having a nice Wednesday,

Katie x

P.s. I have recently joined Facebook and would be delighted to become your friend. I am new to social media but will be using my Facebook profile to help keep you up-to-date with the Katies Cards news as well as posting interesting gift and lifestyle ideas and advice. Click here to visit my Facebook page and request friendship with me.

Easter chicks e-card

Sending a heartfelt Easter E-greeting out to everyone we know is a great way of letting them know you are thinking about them without the hassle and cost of buying, writing and posting lots of printed cards. With a couple of swift mouse clicks, and a few well chosen typed sentiments, and Bingo! Easter wishes sent to all.

At Katie’s Cards we have nine fabulous animated Easter Ecards for you to send.

Dancing Easter rabbits ecards

We hope you enjoy sending it to all the younlings in your family or friends family.

At present I am sorry to say that we are struggling to come up with an original idea for a new St Patrick’s Day Ecards which falls on the 17th March, as it is hard to think of a scenario that does not involve leprechauns! I have considered featuring Saint Patrick himself ridding Ireland of snakes and other pests, but it feels quite an involved topic and not very Ecard friendly. Perhaps something featuring a harp, any suggestions are very welcome.

I am glad to say we do not have the same problem coming up with ideas for new Easter Ecards, there is a feast of visual images that come to mind including spring colours and flowers, eggs of all varieties and the menagerie of small, cute, fluffy baby animals. This year Easter Sunday is on 4th April so plenty of time before we upload the new ecards.

Easter is swiftly followed by Mother’s Day on the 9th of May, which is always a very pleasurable occasion to contemplate! This year we have a floral theme in the pipeline, watch this space for more information and maybe a sneak preview.

As ever we will notify our members when new ecards are added via the monthly newsletter, but might be a good idea to keep an eye on the site over this busy period.

Easter Morning E card

Easter week was a perfect spring postcard. The blossoms were budding on the branches in our garden by the sea and a little snail of crocuses lined the path down to the Summerhouse. I was volunteered to pick some daises to sprinkle in painted eggcups, my reluctant brothers to fetch daffodils for the vases. On Easter Saturday we all pitched in to lay a special table with yellow candles and napkins and tiny fluffy chicks perched on the table centerpiece. But on the side plates, where usually an Easter egg wrapped in a colourful ribbon would sit, there was nothing!

After much earnest negotiation, I had been given license to mastermind the Easter lunch gifts. They were hidden away awaiting the ‘grand reveal’ on Easter Sunday morning.

When my mother first gave me the money to execute my plan, I struggled make a decision. The entire family had given up chocolate for Lent, thrilling and challenging for me, irritating to my brothers. So I was consumed with craving and, feeling the anticipation a 40-day abstinence would create. What to do? Long-time favourites? Variations on a theme? Above all, I didn’t want to be predictable. I wanted to create something memorable.

Easter bonnet containing eggs

Swinging from a huge branch at the end of our garden one day inspiration struck: I would make trees out of kitchen towel cardboard tubes to which I would attach egg-carton nests, filled with sweets and chocolate eggs. I could make four or five for us all to share and embellish them with vines, leave and flowers. Which is exactly what I did. Even though it took several painstaking sessions with coloured tissue card and a paint brushes to complete the trees I was delighted to finally place the multi-coloured silver foil eggs on the shredded straw.

On Easter Saturday night I found the perfect corner to conceal them, covered with tea towels under a chair against the wall in the dining room. After which I went to bed and slept restlessly until the sun beamed through the curtains in my bedroom and awoke me early on Easter Sunday morning. When the lunch was ready and everyone was seated and patiently waiting I announced a triumphant ‘Ta-da’ and whisked the cover off my goodies to transport to the table. But the gasps were not the ones of admiration I had hoped for, the drama not the sort I had planned. The trees were in tatters, the leaves ripped off, the straw tumbling out and the eggs half unwrapped, half-eaten. Whereupon Bedlam. Fearing them sabotaged I rounded on my brothers who each accused the other, before my father stepped in suggesting a mouse could be the culprit. Which my hard-of-hearing grandpa took to be a call to arms, jumping to his feet brandishing a fork and my mother feared to be one of a number of rodents over-running her home, causing her to shriek and drop the gravy.

Whats at the end of an Easter rainbow?

Once I had dried my tears and my father had searched in vain for a pink-nosed visitor with chocolate covered whiskers my mother tipped the untouched eggs into cocktail glasses and salvaged the surviving adornments to attach to them. Only after a delicious meal and lots of sympathy did I recover, helped along by the first sweet taste of the much-missed chocolate.

Easter Chicks Ecard

These days I keep the chocolate out of temptations way, my children posing more of a threat, I think, than mice! Representing re-birth and new beginnings, Easter is a time of joy to share with friends and family. Sending an Ecard is a fun, fresh way to celebrate this most hopeful of the calendar’s holidays.

I have created a collection of Easter ecards that are quick to preview and just as easy to send. It’s as simple as choosing your favourite E card, personalizing and emailing it, with a low-cost membership to the site that allows you to send E-cards on all other occasions as well. The selection of 6 Easter e cards features a mixture of colourful painted eggs, adorable chicks and blossoming flowers, each e-card designed to be a heart-warming greeting to remind a loved one you care about them. So why not be an early bloomer and choose a cheerful Ecard to send to your nearest and dearest this Easter season?