It’s an age-old question: what do you do with a greeting card from a loved one? Throwing it out feels ungrateful and impolite, but saving it often leads to boxfuls of cards in the back of your closet … which eventually gets thrown out years later during a spring-cleaning purge.
Millbrook artist and educator Saira Knowles has a solution: the “card that lives forever.” Through her new business The Painted Gift, she hand-paints multi-purpose, customizable greeting cards with ribbons and cardboard stands that turn the card into a gift that can be displayed and enjoyed as a work of art long after it’s been gifted.
Hailing from Manchester, U.K., Knowles has an extensive education in art design, fashion, and textiles, as well as years of experience teaching art and drama and working as an award-winning museum and gallery educator.
She is now using her extensive art and storytelling skills to craft whimsical designs ranging from florals to landscapes, animals, “bubbles” of multiple doodles, and even sourdough bread. There are currently 16 collections of images, though Knowles will continually add to them as the seasons change.
Having worked in galleries, Knowles says “art should be for all and not an exclusive thing to own,” which is why her original hand-made greeting cards — which can take hours to create — remain affordably priced. While the composition and colour palettes will match the selected image, each hand-painted piece is unique and original artwork.
With her husband Rob building The Painted Gift website from scratch, Knowles has chosen to run her business independently of third-party marketplace or e-commerce sites. Customers can order prints on a folded card, matte-coated digital paper, and deckled-edge watercolour paper or — for a truly stunning one-of-a-kind gift — a hand-painted original on cotton paper.
Available for shipping across Canada, U.S., and U.K., both prints and the original artwork come with an attached ribbon and a cardboard easel so the gift recipient can display the card and enjoy it for years to come. You can also add an optional personalized message to your gift that will printed on the front, back, or inside of the card, depending on the item purchased.
“When you are just putting money in a card, it can feel inadequate and thoughtless, but this solves that,” says Knowles. “It means that you put thought into it, it’s something unique, and it’s something to keep. This is a gift and a card.”
You can browse the card collections at paintedgift.com and follow The Painted Gift on Facebook and Instagram.
VIDEO: Original hand-painted greeting cards by The Painted Gift
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