A Card Made for a Friend is Special.
Sometimes you just can’t find the right card in the local shop, and while we need to keep our distance to avoid the dreaded virus, a hand made card is the way to go. More than that, it is personal and topical.
This hand-painted card has evolved to become the design for a fundraising set of mugs – I hope people will buy them for their friends and family members in health care, the doctors and nurses they love. Masks need to be worn in other situations too so all sorts of people I haven’t even thought of can relate to the strain put on romance by having to wear one.
I painted this card in acrylics and called it ‘Isolation kiss, Hello Swallow!’
The swallows arrived on the day I was drawing the card and I included one because it had come all the way from Africa. This was the first to arrive and it surveyed the scene from the electric wires then flew all around the house and away across the field. I am always impressed by their journey and I thought it represented the freedom we long for. No more swallows arrived until the following day.
Some days later I thought it might appeal to people with friends and family working in hospitals and health clinics so I began to tweak the design to make mugs I could sell to raise money for the Health service.
I will donate £3.00 from every mug sold to NHS Charities Together.
I have designed three mugs with variations of the drawing and a bright blue sky. The first is the close kiss repeated on both sides. The second separates the lovers with the man on one side and the woman on the opposite side and the third is the same but swopped around, so that the figure visible towards the drinker is changed.
The FaceMask Kiss Mugs are printed to order and are available for purchase at
GalleryCB.com online Shop.
I added different words on each I Love My NHS, I Love My Nurse and I Love My Doctor. The writing is a discreet size on the front, Black on White and White on Blue, and doesn’t spoil the design.
These are images provided by the printers and compiled by me, but I have ordered a set and will photograph them when they arrive. They are normal 11oz mug sizes.
The picture started with a vague notion of having to stop kissing and the comical image of trying to kiss through a mask came to mind. I doodled in pen and pencil then used a thick marker to make a cartoon of it. The blue occurred to me later when I wanted to make it more dramatic.
Here is a scaled-down version of the ‘separated lovers’ design for the mug with the blue stretched out to cover the front.
Finally, here is an image to share – the card against a brightly colored sponge-painted board and the little Mr and Mrs roll-on deodorant people below.
Where do these ideas come from!
When you can’t find the right card in the local shop remember that a hand made card is special. This card was developed into a design for a fundraising mug.
Buy your FaceMask Kiss Mug at GalleryCB.com online Shop Now and £3.00 from every mug sold will go to the NHS staff and volunteers who are working to help patients and families.