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Our most loved (and sometimes most loathed) Hallmark holiday is behind us for another year, but that's no excuse to stop sending snail mail to your favorite people. Show your pals you're thinking of them even when there's not a candy-guzzling, candle-lighting, pink-and-red lovefest compelling you to put pen to paper and get your feelings—lovey-dovey or otherwise—out there.
Loaded Blanks, comic book-like illustrated cards that allow you to fill in the blanks, work for any scenario. There are cards aimed at occasions like Mother's Day, birthdays, anniversaries, and even breast cancer awareness, but all the cards are open to your own unique interpretation. Forget the boundaries traditional greeting cards place on you—if you like your communication sans sap and schmaltz, write something edgy or pen in your own inside jokes. Or steal from the masters, but give them a twist (surely your friends have never received a card with an apple and a pear engaged in a Shakespearian quote-off.)
All the illustrations are done by up-and-coming artists, and the cards are printed on 100 percent post-consumer waste, so you're doing your part to help the arts and the planet. You shouldn't need a card company's excuse to keep in touch, and you shouldn't have to trawl the aisles of a drugstore trying to find a card that says what you could say yourself a thousand times better. Put on your thinking cap, flex those creative muscles, and mail your year-round Valentine (and everyone else in your address book) a card they'll want to pin up on their fridge.
Make Yours: loadedblankshq.com
