I made this

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Last weekend at the grocery store I zipped down the “seasonal”aisle because for some reason it’s across from the cheese aisle (Mr. SuzerSpace is a firm believer that you can never have enough cheese). And I was kind of surprised to see the boxes of Valentine cards kids give out at school. Seems like just yesterday the aisle was full of Christmas candy, and then it was the sad remnants of the clearance holiday gift basket (although I did score a neat set of mugs and hot chocolate for $3.00 that week, so that was awesome!).

But the thing is, I wasn’t surprised they were there. It’s the beginning of February and it’s time for the store to update that aisle. What surprised me is how little they’ve changed since I was in school. Same box, same sentiments, same cartoon/candy characters. And seriously, it’s been a minute since I was a kid, carefully addressing envelopes with everyone’s name, hoping that I’d get a few back in return in my carefully crafted Kleenex-box-turned-Valentine’s-Mailbox on my desk.

I should have realized that the standard store offerings weren’t that great, because year after year at my day job, a loyal crew of the moms turn to me, their resident pre-press tech, to turn their Pinterest dreams into reality by making them swoon-worthy cards for their kids. They don’t want the same-old cards that everyone has. But calling on a graphic designer to produce your cards is not an option for everyone.