Valentine cards have always been intriguing to me. When I was a kid there was always that anticipation that someone might fancy me enough to secretly give me a card, mixed with the slight dread that I might be the only one who wouldn’t get a Valentine… both of which happened a few times in different years.
Of course it’s all different now that I’m an adult (though not necessarily grown up). Valentine cards are no longer secretly given. I’ve naturally been through phases of thinking Valentine’s Day is all commercialised rubbish, of being annoyed at feeling a duty to give a Valentine to someone I wasn’t sure I loved anymore and of being excited to find the perfect card for someone I’d just fallen in love with.
I recently found a doodle I gave to my boyfriend a few years ago when we were just starting to get serious. You can see it on the right – it’s not quite up to the standard of the stick figure cartoon portraits I do now but you can see how the idea got underway 🙂
I started offering custom stick figure portraits in my Etsy shop as Valentine cards a couple of years ago and this was when I first started to make regular sales – it turns out lots of other people want to give something a bit more personal and unique on Valentine’s Day too!
Drawing the couple portraits is one of my favourite things to do – it makes me very happy to see so many different types of people all of whom are in love with someone. Enough to go to the trouble of getting a custom portrait drawn of themselves!
Valentine’s Day can sometimes feel quite negative – the ridiculous commercialism, the hiked up prices of flowers and restaurants, and the loneliness if you don’t have someone to spend it with. But I think as long as we focus on it as a celebration of love of all kinds it’s a good thing – it’s a day to remind us to tell people who are special to us how much they mean.
Click on the pictures below to see each item in my Etsy shop.
