Greeting cards on display at retail.
A greeting card is an illustrated, folded card usually featuring a message or greeting or other sentiment. Although greeting cards are usually given on special occasions such as birthdays, Christmas or other holidays, they are also sent on 'non-occasions' to say 'hello' or 'thank you'. Greeting cards, usually packaged with an envelope, come in a variety of styles, are manufactured and/or hand-made by hundreds of companies big and small.
Hallmark Cards and American Greetings are the largest producers of greeting cards in the world.
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Contents
- 1 Handmade Cards
- 2 Postcard
- 3 Industry Association
- 4 List of companies manufacturing or selling greeting cards
- 5 See also
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Handmade Cards
Many greetings cards are printed by large manufacturers such as Hallmark, but since the late 1980's there has been a strong trend towards 'handmade' cards. These cards often exhibit a sort of 'primitive' style, using commonly available objects such as envelopes, card, wrapping paper, or natural objects such as leaves, hessian, or hand-made papers often incorporating silk threads (known as mulberry papers) or seeds.
There are many different types of hand-made cards. Such as decoupage, teabag folding, stamping, friendly plastic, glass painting, stackers. Stackers have become particularly common as they moved beyond the hobby market, and into the larger commercial markets. The commercial 'hand-made' cards sold in high street stores and card shops are usually of the stacker variety.
The largest commercial group selling materials and products for hand made cards in the UK is HobbyCraft. There are also very large commercial craft fairs held at many venues around the country, on a rather grander scale than the old church hall, run by companies such as ICHF. Here are there are many small family business which supply materials for particular sections of the market, such as Tea-Tastic Teabags or WhichCraft of Broomhill.
Postcard
Greeting cards derive from postcards which are single sided without the fold. Postcards appeared fairly early on in the history of the Postal Service as a cheaper way of sending messages, especially those of a tourist nature.
Industry Association
The Greeting Card Association is an international trade organization representing the interests of greeting card and stationery manufacturers.
List of companies manufacturing or selling greeting cards
- Hallmark Cards
- American Greetings
- Caspari
See also
- Christmas card
- Cardmaking
- e-card
