When life hands you lemons ...

I was struck by a nasty virus during the past two weeks that pretty much kept me at home. After spending an entire week in bed, ugh, I got busy on the computer during the second week. Doing what? Thought I'd show you ...

A quartet of greeting cards from the new "Animal Attraction" line. I've been collecting quirky Victorian images of animals for a while, thinking they would become letterpress postcards. Instead, they're regular greeting cards. These are the vertical versions, there are horizontals, too. And every card in every Cards With A past line is now available in three sizes (A2, A6, A7). Yeah, it's a lot of work making the masters, but what else have I had to do lately, besides get well?!

Oh, the images are from Nov. 1888 St. Nicholas Magazine (octopus & whale); Chatterbox for Little Folks, 1883 (dog); a 1908 issue of The Chatterbox magazine (salmon); The Teachers' and Pupils' Cyclopedia, 1904 (frogs).

Animal of the day: water ballet

This is one of a series of line drawings accompanying a poem in an 1889 issue of St. Nicholas children's magazine. It is about a man in search of the unusual and he found it with "the Octopus a-waltzing with the whale, whale, whale."