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.

The earliest recorded day to honour ‘mothers’ date back to the spring festival the ancient Greeks dedicated to Rhea, the mother of many deities, and also to the offerings the Romans made to their Great Mother of Gods, Cybele. It is also believed that many Christians celebrated a special festival on the fourth Sunday in Lent in honor of Mary, the mother of Jesus.

In England the religious holiday was subsequently expanded to include all mothers and was named Mothering Sunday. Workers would return to their homes on Mothering Sunday with gifts, or special cakes for their mothers. The whole family would attend church together and  a lavish dinner of roast lamb, or veal was prepared, at which mother was treated as queen for the day and everything was done to make her happy and comfortable.

The custom of celebrating Mothering Sunday became common practice during the 19th century. The day was celebrated with a festive mood and the dish of the day was called furmety. It consisted of wheat grains boiled in sweet milk, then sugar and spice was added. In recent times, as society has evolved the day is now generally referred to as Mother’s Day in many western countries.

The above mentioned ‘mothering cake’ also went by the name of Simnel cake, similar to a Christmas cake. It was first boiled in water and then baked and it sometimes had an almond icing at other times the crust was of flour and water, coloured with saffron, but usually it was covered in  a layer of marzipan, then toasted, and eaten during the Easter period. A layer of almond paste was also baked into the middle of the cake and the top of the cake, around the edge, were eleven marzipan balls to represent the disciples of Jesus with Judas omitted. In some variations Christ was also represented on the cake by a ball placed at the middle.

In the United States, Mother’s Day has been observed for over 150 years. Anna Jarvis, an Appalachian housewife, organised a day to raise awareness of the bad health conditions suffered by many in her community, a cause she believed would be best served by the local community mothers, she called it ‘Mother’s Work Day’. It did not take long to spread all over the states, the governor of West Virginia issued the first Mother’s Day proclamation in 1910 and Oklahoma followed suit and celebrated it in that same year. By 1911, all of the states in the Union had its own Mother’s Day celebrations.

Anna’s daughter, after her death (who was also called Anna) began to lobby prominent businessmen and politicians including Presidents Taft and Roosevelt to support her campaign to create a day in honor of the all mothers. At one of the first church services organised to celebrate Anna’s mother in 1908,  Anna handed out white carnations which happened to be her mother’s favorite flower. A few years later, the House of Representatives adopted a resolution calling for officials of the government to also wear a white carnation on Mother’s Day. In 1914 Woodrow Wilson finally signed a bill creating Mother’s Day as a national holiday and it has been an entry on the spring calendar ever since.

People observed Mother’s Day by attending church, writing letters to their mothers, and also by giving greeting cards, presents, and flowers. With the increasing prevalence in gift giving activity associated with Mother’s Day, Anna Jarvis became very angry, she believed that the day’s sentiment was being sacrificed at the expense of business greed and profit. Despite Jarvis’s misgivings, Mother’s Day has flourished in the United States and all over the world and has become one of the years biggest celebrations with a large associated industry providing cards, gifts and flowers.

Mother’s day is a wonderful way of thanking your Mother for all she has done for you and many people show their thanks in different ways with cards and gifts, chocolates, flowers, breakfast in bed, days out or even weekends away. Why not try something new this year and send a mother’s day e card, we have many wonderful animated e cards which I am sure any mother would love to receive! But don’t forget to get her lots of gifts too!

Painted Flowers Mothers Day E card

We will be creating versions of this Ecard for Easter, Thank You and Thinking of you categories as well.

Mothers Day Fairies

The night before, my father might come home with a bunch of flowers elaborately hidden beneath his coat, which he then smuggled into a vase. It was my cue to set to work in my bedroom, surrounded by card, ribbon and glue, waiting for inspiration to strike and my creation to take shape.

In my early teens I was grown-up enough to make a bigger contribution- perhaps even managing a delicious breakfast here and there. One year, fruit plate and smoothie proudly arranged on a decorated tray, I bumped into an object walking up the stairs, which, I soon discovered, was my mother. Although delighted with the goodies which I explained were heading in her direction she said she had to rush to an appointment, leaving me standing baffled on the stairs. Later that day the bizarre little incident became clear as my brothers and I finally presented our cards and our mother exclaimed: ‘Oh, is it mother’s day?!’

Mothers Day gardner

Reaching into my late teens focused on the new idea of attending Art College, dare I sheepishly admit to forgetting Mother’s Day, or being too wrapped up in my work, and the events happening in my life to spare some thought for my Mother on her special day of the year.

Hitting my twenties and living away from home I came to fully appreciate my mother once again- the food parcels, the home-cooked meals and, yes, the occasional bag of washing. Always a card, and I sometimes managed to persuade my bothers to make a space in their busy lives to treat her to a bite to eat or a trip to the theatre. And we were never in any doubt afterwards that it was 100% worth it.

Mothers Day peacok

So it has continued until I was able to start enjoying Mother’s days in my own right and I came to understand just how important they are. There’s nothing quite like the clumsy wrapping of a small gift or the hushing in the hallway of young voices when they are trying to surprise you. In fact, when my children were little I used to enjoy the squabbles over who would be in charge of giving what as much as the tokens themselves. And their sweet sentiments in thoughtful cards continue to delight me today.

My family has now become my greatest testing ground. And they don’t come much more helpful than my mother!

At www.katiescards.com I have created a collection of mother’s day ecards that are quick to preview and just as easy to send. Mother’s day gives us all a chance to express our appreciation for the woman who brought us into the world and to let her know we do not take her for granted. I hope that from my selection of 8 mother’s day e cards there will be one that is just right for you to send to your Mom.