Behind the Scenes at Hoof’s Card Emporium: How I Make My Handmade Greeting Cards

Behind The Scenes Of Hoof's Card Emporium

Running Hoof’s Card Emporium is a mix of creativity, routine, and a lot of small details that most people never see. Every handmade card starts as a sketch or idea, usually inspired by everyday life, sports, or something funny I’ve noticed, or just an idea that has popped into my head. From there, I turn it into a digital illustration using my drawing tablet and testing my designs to make sure the colours and layout print cleanly. I'm not a classically trained artist by any means and so my designs probably take a lot longer to finalise than most greeting card designers and being the type of person who is - more than a little - obsessive about making sure everything looks "just right", doesn't always help the completion turnaround time for my designs either! 

Once a new greeting card design is finished, I print test copies, check the colours, and make sure the card looks exactly how I want it to. Then it’s photographed and added to the website, where it joins the rest of my funny birthday cards, sports‑themed cards, and personalised designs. Each product listing published then needs item descriptions, image descriptions, keywords, search tags and much more, all which will hopefully help it get discovered by a receptive audience.

It’s a slow, steady process and the back-end bits can be laborious but its all part of the workflow and a necessary evil. The opportunity to create new designs though is definitely the part I most enjoy, especially when I receive feedback from a customer that the card they have bought has hit the mark and been well-received. This makes creating something from scratch and seeing it become a finished greeting card feel worthwhile and rewarding.

If you’ve bought from my shop this year, thank you as every order genuinely makes a difference. I’ll be adding more new designs soon, including more of fitness and sports statistic-themed cards as well as a few of quirky, completely random ideas that seem to make people smile.