Behind the scenes

Chansons de Noël

November 2024

In my December 2023 post, I hinted at an exciting new choral collaboration. It is now finally time to reveal our secret! When we decided to set our 2024 Advent Calendar in Paris, we also decided that we wanted a proper French choir to sing some proper French carols for us. So, wanting only the very best, we started our search at the top with an email to the Maîtrise Notre-Dame de Paris – the choir school for Notre-Dame Cathedral – to see if they would allow us to record their children’s choir. To our delight, the answer was “oui”!

Unfortunately, following the heartbreaking fire that devasted Notre-Dame Cathedral in April 2019, we were unable to use the legendary building itself for our recordings. And so, on a clear and chilly January evening, we found ourselves in Saint-Germain l’Auxerrois: a gorgeous church situated behind the Louvre, just over the Seine from Notre-Dame. During the Revolution, Saint-Germain l’Auxerrois was used as a barn storing animal feed, a printing shop and a gunpowder factory, its bell “Marie” was used to signal the start of the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, and it has nearly been demolished – twice! With its stunning architecture and storied history, it was the perfect fit to be the temporary home of the Notre-Dame choirs and services while the cathedral was being restored.

Naturally, the choir were fantastic, and just a few hours later we emerged with four wonderful recordings of four wonderful French carols. You’ll find three of them in the Advent Calendar’s music player and hear the fourth on Christmas Day.

Notre-Dame Cathedral will make its triumphant reopening on 8th December, and we're sure that the choir will be looking forward to their return home. We extend our thanks to them for welcoming us so warmly, and we wish them all un très joyeux Noël!

A Transport of Delight

September 2024

From the London Underground (a.k.a. “the Tube”), whose colourful, linear map design has been emulated by almost every major rapid transit system in the world, to the fleet of several thousand bright red double-decker buses (featured in our latest card), London’s public transport is truly iconic.

The city’s – and the world’s – first underground rail network opened in 1863 and has since grown into a colossal network of over 400km (250 mile), the second largest outside of China, with over 5 million passengers each day. Despite its size, the efficiency of the system is remarkable: 272 stations with distances between them as little as 260m and train frequencies as high as one every 100 seconds.

Meanwhile, London’s famous buses play host to an even larger number of passengers – almost 2 billion annually. To put that in perspective, it is roughly the number of annual bus passengers in New York, Los Angeles and Paris combined. Running in their distinctive red since 1905, they have now evolved into the second largest zero-emission bus fleet in Europe, with many routes running as frequently as one bus every 3-4 minutes. Still more buses, distinguished by their bold blue colouring, provide tours of the city’s countless landmarks; one of which plays host to our card’s feathered friends.

Way back in 1957, the red London bus was the subject of a satirical but affectionate song by Flanders and Swann, the title of which we have borrowed for this piece. If you’re not already familiar with the “big six-wheeler, scarlet-painted, London Transport, diesel-engined, ninety-seven horsepower omnibus” of the refrain, do Google it. A Transport of Delight is in store for you.

Musical Jokes

May 2024

In 1749, Holy Roman Empress Maria Theresa complained about a treble in the St Steven’s Cathedral choir, calling his singing “crowing”. The teenager she was referring to had already been a problem for the choirmaster and when, shortly afterwards, he cut off the pigtail of another choirboy, he was caned and summarily dismissed from the choir. The crowing prankster’s name was Joseph Haydn.

This nature as a joker didn’t cease with adulthood, and Haydn was fond of musical jokes in his later works.  One of the best-known is in the final movement of Symphony no. 60, “Il Distratto”. Opening with great energy and excitement, the music abruptly comes to a halt at the end of the first phrase, and then the violinists mimic tuning their instruments, before continuing as if nothing had happened.

Another great example is the “Farewell” Symphony, no. 45. At the time, Haydn’s employer Prince Esterhazy, along with his musicians, had been staying at his summer palace for far longer than expected. The musicians wanted to go home and implored Haydn to request they be permitted to leave. Instead, Haydn wrote this symphony, wherein as the music approaches its end, the players are instructed to snuff out their candles and leave, one by one, until only two violinists remain – originally the composer himself and his concertmaster. The prince ordered that the entire court return home the next day.

Haydn’s former student, Mozart, had a sense of humour that notoriously tended towards the vulgar. So perhaps Haydn was channelling his friend when he wrote Symphony no. 93. Towards the end of the second movement, the music softens and slows, gradually dimming until, finally, a great fortissimo “fart” from a bassoon breaks the serenity, followed nonchalantly by an elegant coda.

With such a history of musical mischief, we’re sure that Haydn would not have objected to our somewhat loose adaptation of his “Bear” symphony for our new card, Mama Bear!

Operatic Entertainment

January 2024

There is a famous saying which goes something like “Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” This is often spuriously attributed to Confucius but in his time, of course, very few had the opportunity to choose their own career. Nowadays, however, it holds at least some semblance of veracity for many – including those of us lucky enough to work for jacquielawson.com.

There will always be less exciting tasks in any job – editing FAQ pages, for example, doesn’t quite hold the same attraction as writing these Behind the Scenes posts – but every member of the JL team gets to do some wonderfully fun things, and we all agree that this year’s A Birthday Opera card is a great example of this.

The somewhat ridiculous premise of this card led to a lot of laughs as we threw ideas back and forth, watched David’s hilarious animations of opera-singing animals, and were brought almost to tears at Mike’s absurdly over-the-top operatic arrangement of the “Happy Birthday” tune. And at the recording session, the singers too had difficulty keeping straight faces, singing "Tanti auguri a te" (“Happy Birthday” in Italian of course – the language of opera) in their best florid coloratura.

Working for Jacquie Lawson is truly a privilege – and a lot of fun! – so while it may not have been Confucius who came up with that phrase, we’re sure it was someone just as wise.

In Service

OCTOBER 2023

“You are a footman, and a footman wears gloves.” – Mr. Carson, Downton Abbey.

It is a common misconception that being a servant in a manor house was a lowly occupation in Edwardian Britain when, in fact, it was quite a prestigious position – especially for those who achieved the higher ranks in the serving hierarchy, such as butlers and housekeepers. This hierarchy was exceptionally strict and rigid, with rankings even within the different groups – for example, the first footman would serve the meat at dinner (the main part of the dish), whilst the second footman would serve a side dish or a sauce. These footmen were incredibly well-dressed, well-mannered, and generally tall and attractive young men who were as much a display of the grandeur of the house as the building and the lands themselves. Even the humblest stable hand commanded more respect than those who worked in the many factories and farms of Britain.

Perhaps the misconception arises from the disdain sometimes found in many English-speaking countries for modern-day serving occupations. Many other countries, however, hold very different views – it is well-known that in France, for instance, waiters are generally held in far higher regard than they are on this side of the Channel. Yet even in the U.K., a sommelier is usually well-respected – much as a high-level serving position would be in an Edwardian stately home.

This may be compounded by the fact that most serving staff in modern times find themselves on the lower end of the income distribution, while in Edwardian Britain, a butler would have found himself earning far above average. Indeed, all the staff in a manor house would likely have earned an above average wage and, while their work hours were long and arduous, they would have avoided having to do the dangerous, back-breaking work found in factories and farms.

Whatever the reason behind this mistaken belief, we thought it would be worth clearing up this little misunderstanding so the staff in our Edwardian Advent Calendar can get the recognition and respect that they deserve!

The Auricula Theatre

MARCH 2023

Tradition holds that Primula auricula first arrived in English gardens when Flemish weavers fled religious persecution in mainland Europe, though this romanticised story is unlikely to be true: it is more likely that it arose from the exchange of varieties between florists of varying nationalities. Whatever its origins, by the 17th century this stunning flower was already becoming a staple of English gardens, and in the 18th and 19th centuries the Auricula Theatre became somewhat of an obsession to English horticulturalists. When viewing one it is easy to see why: the delicate beauty of the remarkable flowers lined up in rows, sometimes tiered as if they were the audience rather than the main event, can be very striking.

Our new card, Auricula Theatre, features one of these displays with, naturally, a bit of a twist! The painting for this card is by our wonderful artist Bev Pask-Hughes, who is also a keen amateur gardener, and it is her own auricula from her Devon garden which you can see in the photo accompanying this post. Sadly, Bev does not yet have a theatre in which to house her collection, but she holds out hope that her husband, Charles, will one day get her one as a birthday present. Perhaps if he reads this, he'll finally get the hint?!

Tim Laman, CC BY 4.0,
via Wikimedia Commons (cropped)

Birds of Paradise

February 2023

With alpine tundra and coral reefs, rainforests and savannahs, the island of New Guinea's variety of environments gives rise to an incredible biodiversity equivalent to that of its southern neighbour, mainland Australia, which is nearly ten times its size. New Guinea and its surrounding waters play host to approximately 8% of all the world's known vertebrate species, yet, despite this vast assortment of creatures, one family stand out from all others: the Paradisaeidae, more commonly known as the birds-of-paradise. From the Bird's Head Peninsula in the northwest to the Bird's Tail Peninsula in the southeast, even the shape of the island is likened to that of its most famous residents.

Our latest Valentine's Day card, Mating Dance, stars a few of these fascinating birds engaged in the activity that made them so famous – their elaborate courtship dances. Each of the 45 known species has its own unique style and approach. Some have simple displays, such as puffing up their vibrant plumage or flicking their long tail feathers, while others have complex sequences of movements, such as moving in circles or leaping into the air. Still more have magnificent, specialised feather structures, enabling them to make their own music with clicks and whirrs during their dance.

If you're a fan of these beautiful creatures, you'll be glad to hear that we've already included them in another, slightly less energetic, card and its sibling note card. This one, unsurprisingly named "Birds of Paradise", also contains some information about a few species of its titular characters so, if you're hungry for more, take a look!

Hot Springs and Warm Summers

NOVEMBER 2022

For a number of years now, much of the choral music in our ecards and Advent Calendars has been recorded by the wonderful choir of Salisbury Cathedral. The recording sessions usually take place in the summer, but even so, British cathedrals are usually quite cold – stained glass windows don't really lend themselves to double-glazing! – so we always bring along a jumper or two.

This year a combination of circumstances led to a change of choir and venue, and so it was that we found ourselves in the Bath Abbey one evening in late August, armed as usual with a carrier bag of distinctly non-summery clothes, to record some distinctly non-summery Christmas carols.

As the evening progressed, we were surprised to find that rather than adding layers of clothing, we were removing them. Subsequent enquiries revealed that the Abbey had recently installed an incredible new underfloor heating system, using free hot water from the springs that also fuel the city's eponymous Roman Baths. You can read more about it here.

The theme for our new Advent Calendar is Sussex, so inevitably one of the recordings we chose was the Sussex Carol (sometimes known by its first line, "On Christmas night all Christians sing"). The carol was so named by the English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, who spent much of his life finding and transcribing folk tunes from around England. He first heard it being sung by Harriet Verrall near Horsham in Sussex, and he was clearly taken by it: he used it in his "Fantasia on Christmas Carols" of 1912, and he also published it in "Eight Traditional English Carols" in 1919.

For our Advent Calendar we made our own arrangement of the carol, rather than using that of Vaughan Williams, and from their warm and cosy choir stalls the Abbey choristers sang it beautifully for us. We hope you agree!

Howzat?

SEPTEMBER 2022

Freshly washed whites, incomprehensible scoring, and the occasional tap of a willow bat on a leather ball: it can only be a game of cricket. But even if you have no clue whether that gesture by the umpire indicated a four or a six, a bye or a leg bye, a wide or a no-ball, or whether he was just scratching an itch, there's something about watching a game of cricket on a sunny English village green which is curiously attractive.

Maybe it's cricket's reputation for gentlemanly behaviour: the phrase "it's just not cricket" is still widely used to describe something which is unjust or unfair. Or maybe it's just that it is so quintessentially English. After all, it has been at the heart of at least two episodes of Midsomer Murders: you don't get much English-er than that.

The picturesque village of Lurgashall, nestled in the fertile hills of West Sussex in the southeast of England, is home not only to an artist famous for her ecards, but also to a particularly well-established village cricket team. Cricket has been played on the green there for over 200 years, while stoolball – a possible ancestor of cricket – was probably played there long before.

Indeed, stoolball originated in Sussex and from time to time experiences revivals in popularity. One such revival, during the First World War, involved a match in Hove between a team of soldiers who had lost an arm in battle and were deemed "damaged by wounds", and a team of elderly lawyers who were "damaged by age". The soldiers won.

Records show that stoolball was still played at Lurgashall as recently as the 1950s, but nowadays stoolball's out and cricket's in. If you're ever in West Sussex on a Saturday afternoon in the summer, you may be lucky enough to catch a match – and a pint or two in the Noah's Ark pub afterwards.

Website redesign

FEBRUARY 2022

We launched jacquielawson.com on 10th February 2002 – almost exactly 20 years ago – with a blue background, a slightly darker blue header, orange highlights, and a picture of Jacquie in sunglasses. The left-hand image is from shortly after the site launch, and the right-hand one is from today, as I write this. As you can see, the site changed very little in 20 years.

But like a well-loved book that looked smart and shiny when new, but has been lying on your coffee table for too long, chewed by the puppy and victim of a few careless spills of red wine, our website was beginning to look a little tatty around the edges, so we decided it was time for an update.

And depending on whether you are reading this article before the launch of the new site or after, you will either be looking at a similarly old-fashioned blue-on-blue arrangement or ... our smart new design! If the former, please don't be too startled next time you visit; and if the latter, we hope you like the new look!

Back to London

NOVEMBER 2021

Way back in 2010 it was Jacquie herself who had the bright idea of making an animated Advent Calendar. Not wishing to disappoint the founder, we all knuckled down to several months of hard work, and happily, the resulting product was an immediate hit and ensured the start of an annual tradition.

While the first Advent Calendar was based in a fictional Christmassy village, for our second effort in 2011 we decided on a real-life location, and we chose the bright lights and sights of our capital city – London.

Since then we've travelled to the seaside, to the Cotswold hills, to a Christmas Market in an unnamed European city, to Edinburgh, to the Nordic countries and the Alps (twice); and we've travelled in time too, to Victorian London and a posh Edwardian country house; and each time we've had fun exploring the Christmas traditions, culture and music of these places and periods.

And now, ten years later, we're returning home to London. Not because we've run out of ideas, I hasten to add! – but because the city is such a rich source of Christmassy inspiration, we couldn't resist another visit. New venues this time round include Shakespeare's Globe theatre, the South Bank Christmas market, Kew Gardens and the Tate Britain art gallery – and like last year, we will also have the vastly improved graphics and speed of operation arising from running the Advent Calendar as native apps rather than trying to cram it all into a browser window.

So, welcome back to London and we hope you enjoy the trip!

Paper posies

MAY 2021

With over 500 ecards on our website, I sometimes wonder where on earth the next idea will spring from. And yet somehow they keep coming – a great example being our latest Mother's Day card.

For some reason best known to herself, Bev thought it would be fun to spend hours and hours cutting out bits of coloured paper into petal and leaf shapes and then sticking them together to make pretty paper flower bouquets.

But crucially, she remembered at each stage of the process to keep a scanned copy of each piece of paper, so that her efforts could later be transformed into an animated ecard. And then a bit of a Haydn symphony was added for musical accompaniment, and there you go – another Mother's Day masterpiece!

And if the cynics amongst you thought it was all done with computers, I am pleased to present you above with evidence to the contrary.

500 and counting

FEBRUARY 2021

Back in February 2002, we launched jacquielawson.com with just five ecards – yes, five! – and the promise of more to come. And on Day 1, hundreds of people took us up on that promise and joined – many of whom are still members today, nineteen years later.

And now I think we can definitively say we've delivered on that promise. We didn't actually notice it at the time, because we were so busy with other things, but at some point over the Christmas period, the total number of ecards on our website hit and then surpassed the amazing total of 500.

That's just over 26 cards a year, or one new release every 2 weeks. Each card takes a lot longer than that, of course – typically several weeks, by the time we've done the original art, scanned and animated it, and then written music to match – but with our little team of artists all working together, we've been able to keep 'em coming all that time.

We've seen Adobe's Flash come and go – and when it went, we were forced to convert every card in our entire collection to the new format. We've seen huge improvements in the speed of the typical internet connection, which has in turn enabled a dramatic increase in the quality of the images and music. And of course, for the last ten years we've been producing an annual Advent Calendar on top of everything else.

Putting ink on paper

NOVEMBER 2020

We've always said that with our animated cards (as opposed to boring paper ones!) you get the best of both worlds: the natural colours and textures of paint, pencils and paper, but with the added interest of movement and music.

Often, all that's needed to provide that vital dimension of movement is a gradual reveal of an underlying image or series of images. We've used a variety of techniques to do this, from simple fades to animated paintbrushes. And sometimes the technique used in the reveal is of as much visual interest as the image being revealed.

For our new Thanksgiving card, our artist David had a beautiful sequence of Autumn nature scenes to show, and he thought he'd try a new technique for revealing them. He poured ink onto wet watercolour paper, so that it bled into the paper to form interesting shapes and shades, and he recorded this process on video. Then he used the video as a mask to reveal the underlying scenes, thus giving a feeling of movement and fluidity to the art.

Rather a lot of rather expensive watercolour paper got used up in the process, but after a few attempts David got the technique just right, and we're rather pleased with the results!

Halloween horrors

OCTOBER 2020

Horror fiction traces roots all the way back to the ancient Greeks and beyond, and stories of ghosts, demons, vampires, and the like can be found throughout European literature. In mediaeval times, the French had a particular penchant for werewolves! – and the "Gothic" style of fiction was invented in 1764 by a British Member of Parliament, Horace Walpole, with his novel "The Castle of Otranto". But it was in the 19th century that the genre really blossomed, and for our Halloween card this year we decided to delve into some of the classics of horror of the last couple of centuries, with more or less subtle references in the animation. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is brought to life by an electrical spark; we see the creation of Dr. Jekyll's chemical serum; a raven flies to a statue of Pallas Athena as in the Edgar Allan Poe story; and so forth.

See if you can find them all as you watch the card. And then at the end of the card, click the "Explore" link to see what you missed!

Digging for victory

JUNE 2020

The Covid-19 crisis has not threatened our food supply in the same way that German U-boats did in 1941, but the threat of shortages combined with the prospect of healthy outdoor activity as a distraction from lockdown has encouraged thousands of people across the UK (and no doubt in other countries) to start growing their own vegetables this Spring.

Here in the UK we were also blessed with an astonishingly prolonged spell of wonderful sunny weather from April through to early June, which certainly helped to get the seedlings off to a flying start.

The photo in the above right shows the recently-acquired allotment belonging to our very own Sally Lisney, who – together with her violinist daughter Emma – has successfully turned a neglected patch of nettle and bindweed into a productive potager.

And our latest Father's Day card shows an even more productive vegetable garden – albeit with the aid of bit of artistic licence!

In Memoriam. We were sad to hear recently of the untimely death from Covid-19 of Bruce Arnold, who was the recording engineer for the music on several of our ecards, including the popular Duck Song. I remember with pleasure our discussions on music and recording techniques, as well as the good humour with which he would request yet another take, just to get it exactly right. We all extend our sincere condolences to his family.

Holi spirit

FEBRUARY 2020

As noted previously in this column, the inspiration for our cards sometimes comes from unlikely sources. Then, a visit to Oxford led to a card about a vintage car rally: today we release an abstract card featuring what I can only describe as a crazy sequence of vibrant splotches of colour and the inspiration for this was the ancient Hindu festival of spring, known as Holi.

Running this year from 9th to 10th March, Holi is mainly known for the custom of spraying, smearing or otherwise drenching oneself, one's friends, and indeed complete strangers with brightly coloured powders and dyes. No-one is excluded and by the end of the day, everyone looks a bit like the final scene of our card.

For this card the art took the lead, as you'd expect, and when it was finished we had to choose music. We looked at pretty much everything from Bach to heavy metal, before settling on the last movement of Mozart's sublime Clarinet Concerto. At first it may seem a curious choice, but we think it's the perfect match. We hope you agree.

A Cotswold Christmas

NOVEMBER 2019

The Cotswold Hills run from the exquisite Georgian city of Bath up around 90 miles to Shakespeare's birthplace at Stratford-upon-Avon. They're officially designated an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty – in fact it's the largest AONB in England. The population of the area is just 139,000 people, but it is visited by around 38 million tourists every year, attracted by gorgeous scenery and ancient villages built of the golden local limestone. And some decent pubs, too.

This year, those 38 million visitors included the JL team researching the location for this year's Advent Calendar. After last year's Edinburgh cityscape we wanted a rural scene, and the beautiful villages we visited, such as Castle Combe (above) and Lower Slaughter, seemed to provide a perfect setting on which to base our fictional Cotswold village: cosy and Christmassy, especially once we'd added a touch of snow!

Pumpkin soup

SEPTEMBER 2019

In our household, a sure sign of the advent of Autumn is soup at lunchtime. Replacing the salads and sandwiches of summer we have a bowl of home-made vegetable soup and some wholemeal toast. We make enough for two or three days at a time, and it's always the same childishly simple recipe: fry up some onions and a diced potato in a little olive oil, add whatever vegetable we fancy, and cover with stock. Simmer till done, then blitz in the pan with a hand blender. Add a dollop of cream if feeling naughty. Serve and look smug.

My favourite vegetable for this treatment is known in the UK as onion squash, in France – where I am writing, and where the supermarkets are full of them at the moment - as potimarron, and in the USA as red kuri squash. But of course, a traditional pumpkin also makes a fine soup – and the recipe also works with spinach, broccoli, leeks, cauliflower ... and so on!

All of which serves as a barely relevant preamble to the announcement of a new version of the Jacquie Lawson English Garden! To celebrate the arrival of the pumpkin season, we've added a brand new pumpkin decorator activity – and we've (temporarily) changed the bug-squashing game to a squash-squashing game! No download required: just visit your Garden any time after 24th September to enjoy these autumnal entertainments. And then go and make some soup.

A real-life Curio Collection

APRIL 2019

The JL team met up in the last few days of April to do some research for this year's Advent Calendar. In a curious twist of fate, our itinerary included Snowhill Manor in Gloucestershire, erstwhile home of a 20th century eccentric called Charles Wade who – in an echo of our own recently-released Curio Collection (see below) – spent a lifetime collecting an enormous quantity of objects from Samurai armour to old bicycles.

For us, it was like walking into the very scene of our own imaginations!

We were lucky to have wonderful Springtime weather to explore the surrounding countryside and the magnificent gardens at Hidcote, and we came away laden with inspiration and (in Bev's case) books for her library and plants for her garden!

Curiouser and curiouser

FEBRUARY 2019

One of my lasting childhood memories is of occasional family visits to my paternal grandparents. They were quite old-fashioned – this was in the late 1960s, which even in Beatles-era Britain wasn't all flower power and free sex – and we children were expected to remain at one end of what seemed like a huge drawing-room, playing with some toys which had been placed there for our amusement. All forms of noise were discouraged. The adults, meanwhile, drank sherry and discussed politics.

Our grandfather was born in South Africa and lived for a large part of his life in the West Indies. When the First World War broke out he returned to England, enlisted in the recently-formed Royal Flying Corps, and spent the war flying sorties around northern France in aeroplanes made of wood and canvas. After the war he returned to his Caribbean plantation for a further decade or so, before finally retiring to the London house which we used to visit. I still remember the slightly exotic feel of his drawing-room, and in particular the shiver of childish excitement caused by the leopard-skin rug stretched out in front of the fire – with the head of the poor leopard still attached.

These memories have been in my mind a lot recently, brought to the surface by a new product which we plan to launch in a few weeks' time. Curious? You will be!

Tenovus Cancer Care

DECEMBER 2018

There's a long-standing tradition here in the UK that Christmas cards (of the paper variety) are published and sold in aid of charities, and to reflect that tradition, we've dedicated a number of our major Christmas ecard releases in recent years to various charities.

So it is with A Woodland Christmas, which is dedicated to Tenovus Cancer Care. Established in Cardiff back in 1943, Tenovus Cancer Care has developed a range of services to support cancer patients and their families. These include a free support and advice line – open even on Christmas Day! – three Mobile Cancer Support Units which bring cancer treatment closer to home, and ‘Sing with Us’ choirs across the country.

They are also the biggest funder of cancer research in Wales, with an annual research budget of around £1 million, and their scientists have contributed to discoveries that have helped treat and care for millions of cancer patients all around the world, including the development of the drug Tamoxifen which is now taken by millions of women worldwide.

So please help Tenovus Cancer Care by sending A Woodland Christmas to your friends and family this Christmas – and maybe consider a donation yourself too.

Window Wanderland

OCTOBER 2018

The idea for our latest Halloween card came when our artist Tom Evans was visiting friends in Bishopston, the area of the city of Bristol where he grew up. Tom stumbled across an amazing community project where people all over the district were using the light from their living rooms – or even entire houses – to create magical silhouettes for the enjoyment of passers-by. It was like a huge outdoor art gallery.

The project has since expanded dramatically and "Window Wanderland" events are held all over the UK, and are starting to appear in other countries, even as far afield as Canada. They're popular throughout the darker months of the year, but for Tom the idea seemed particularly appropriate for an animated Halloween card – the idea of a black cat being able to move magically in silhouette through the walls of houses was particularly appealing!

You can read the inspiring Window Wanderland story, and maybe even create your own magical trail, by visiting www.windowwanderland.com. And if you're inspired to organise your own event, don't forget to send us some pictures!

Hyphenation

AUGUST 2018

Back in 2002, when jacquielawson.com was first launched, the concept of an electronic greeting card was relatively new, and because of this, the word e-card was normally hyphenated. If someone invented an electronic sausage now, it would probably be called an e-sausage. The hyphen makes it clear that this is not a normal sausage, but a special type of sausage: namely, an electronic one.

And anyway, esausage looks like a spelling mistake.

As time has passed, the internet has wormed its way into almost every aspect of our lives, and even if e-sausages are not yet available on your butcher's counter, e-cards have certainly become a familiar method of correspondence. As a result, the hyphen in "e-card" has lost its purpose, and the word ecard has entered common usage.

We're traditionalists at heart, and ever since 2002 we've hung on to our hyphen like a bat hangs on to a beam – and for consistency, we've also always written e-mail rather than email. But in the modern world, orthography is sometimes determined not by the publishers of dictionaries but by the commercial necessity of optimal search engine rankings. And bizarrely, at the time of writing, if I type "dog ecard" into Google, the first entry is Blue Mountain (the cheek of it!) – whereas for "dog e-card" JL rightly claims the top spot. The problem is that most people search for ecards rather than e-cards!

So we've decided to bite the bullet and consign our hyphens to the mists of history. And very soon, some poor soul is going to be given the job of going through the entire jacquielawson.com site and replacing the words e-card and e-mail with ecard and email respectively.

But as Juliet observed long before ecards were invented, a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

Claude Debussy

MAY 2018

Observant lovers of classical music may have noticed that in the last few months we've featured a lot of music by the French composer Claude Debussy. We've played both his delightful Arabesques for piano (the second features in a card due for release in a few weeks), three of the four movements of his Petite Suite, and a movement from Estampes.

Music lovers who are keen historians may also have spotted that this year is the centenary of Debussy's death in March 1918 at the relatively early age of 55, and may have concluded that we're consciously marking the occasion with our choice of music.

But in fact it was just coincidence, at least to begin with. Pagodes and the first Arabesque simply seemed like a perfect match for our Chinese New Year and Valentine releases respectively, and then one idea led to another in the same vein and we kept finding perfect matches. The centenary just gave us a brilliant excuse for sticking to the theme!

The Petite Suite in particular is a delightful collection. Debussy originally wrote it for piano duet, but when its popularity led to demands for an orchestral version, he was too busy to undertake this himself and asked his friend Henri Büsser instead. Büsser's orchestration is masterly and is the version you will hear in any recording or concert programme. But unlike poor Debussy, Büsser lived to the ripe old age of 101, as a result of which his work is still in copyright in some countries. So the orchestration you hear on our ecards is our own.

Rodmarton Manor

APRIL 2018

From time to time we like to gather the JL team together somewhere interesting to thrash out new ideas and seek inspiration. A few months ago, on a cold January day, we met for an afternoon at Rodmarton Manor, the beautiful Cotswold home of the Biddulph family.

The house was built, and all its furniture made, in the early decades of the 20th century, according to the ideals of the Arts and Crafts movement, which valued well-designed, locally-sourced, hand-made products in a reaction against poor quality industrialised manufacturing of the late Victorian period. No doubt to the amazement of their social peers, the Biddulphs lived modestly in one wing of the house, and opened the grand reception rooms to the public for community teaching, craft work, and artistic events – including puppet shows for the children of the village.

During the Second World War, Rodmarton became home to children evacuated from a London school under Operation Pied Piper, the wartime program devised to protect children from aerial bombing of cities. Quite by coincidence, we discovered just before our visit that amongst the young girls sent there in 1939 was one Ann Forsyth, elder sister of our very own Jacquie Lawson. Her memories of the place include the freezing cold chapel, terrible food – and masses of butterflies in the exquisite gardens.

Many thanks to John Biddulph, grandson of the original owners, for welcoming us to the house outside the normal season, and for his very interesting tour.

Looking forward

FEBRUARY 2018

Let's face it, for most of us February is a pretty dismal month. The Christmas and New Year parties and celebrations are just a memory; cold, damp weather seems to seep in through every keyhole; and Spring still seems a long way off. Maybe you kept your spirits up in January by playing with your Jacquie Lawson Advent Calendar, but even that is beginning to pall by now.

You look through the window at a bare, grey garden and you dream of the days when you'll be able to get out there, sow lovely flower seeds, nurture the seedlings, and eventually plant them out to form brilliant banks of colour. But all that is weeks away yet!

Or is it? Here at JL we've been working on a new project which will fill your world with sunshine and flowers! Not only that, but it'll also fill that Advent-Calendar-shaped gap in your life.

Keep an eye on our newsletters and home page for the latest news ... more to come very soon.

Little frogs

JANUARY 2018

Newcomers to jacquielawson.com are sometimes surprised to find that even though our cards are destined for distribution and display by electronic means, they have their origins in paint, pencils and paper; and the subjects on which they're based are equally real and tangible.

The star of our latest floral arrangement is Ranunculus asiaticus, which belongs to the same family as the common buttercup. Curiously, the Latin word "ranunculus" actually means "little frog", or "tadpole", and it's thought that this may derive from the fact that ranunculi grow well in damp areas near rivers or streams.

The cultivated ranunculus, with its dense layers of soft petals in wonderfully bright colours, is imported to Great Britain from Italy and other Mediterranean countries, and is at its best in January. So it seemed like a perfect subject for a card to brighten up a grey winter, and our artist Bev dutifully went out to purchase some prime examples to act as models for her paintings. It seems, however, that the good folk of Devon share our enthusiasm for these pretty blooms: several florists proved to have sold out completely before Bev was finally able to purchase the fine specimens you see in the above right.

So when you view or send A Cheerful Composition, perhaps you'll enjoy the thought that the magnificent flowers you're watching on your iPad or computer screen were not just conjured into a shadowy digital existence using Photoshop, but were grown and picked in Italy, transported to a florist in Devon, purchased and brought home and arranged in a vase on Bev's desk, appreciated and admired, painted in watercolours on fine art paper, and – finally – scanned into a computer for our animators to work their magi

Kitchen orchestra

NOVEMBER 2017

A few months ago, in one of our team discussions on forthcoming ecards, the subject of this year's Thanksgiving card came up. Someone recalled Clockwork Celebration – a very successful New Year card which featured Auld Lang Syne being played (apparently) by the clocks in a clockmaker's workshop. How about doing something similar, but with music made up of the sounds of a Thanksgiving meal being prepared in a kitche

Well, I'm never one to do things by halves, so I decided that I would forgo traditional instruments altogether, and see what I could make using only the objects available to me in my own batterie de cuisine. There followed many happy hours of clattering about in the kitchen testing different saucepans, spoons, glasses and bottles for their musical qualities. I can't imagine what the neighbours thought I was up to.

My only slight cheat was to use Kontakt sampling software to provide a full scale of notes for the pitched "instruments". With this program I was able to record just a single wine glass "ping", then tell the software that this single note was (as it happened) B flat, and the software then magically gave me an entire scale, so I could play fully chromatic wine glasses on my MIDI keyboard!

If you listen carefully to the bass line, you may wonder what it is that's making that rather satisfying sound. Sounds almost like a pizzicato string bass, doesn't it? That was the idea: but in fact, it's the sound of a large paella pan being hit with an overgrown courgette!

Mediaeval Manor

SEPTEMBER 2017

Our new Halloween card is inspired by Bailiffscourt Manor at Climping in Sussex, which the team visited one foggy weekend a few months ago. Although the house looks for all the world like a mediaeval manor, it was actually constructed between 1928 and 1935, but adhering strictly to 15th century architectural style and using original stone, woodwork, fireplaces and so on from other ancient house.

The estate also includes a (genuine) 13th century chapel, an underground tunnel between two of the buildings – and a muster (or an ostentation, if you prefer, as I do) of peacocks!

The driving force behind this extraordinary effort was Lord Moyne, whose great-great-grandfather Arthur Guinness founded the eponymous Irish brewery. Mediaeval houses were all the rage at the time, and for five years after its completion the house would have been the scene of glittering parties for the elite of London society. But after the death of Lady Moyne in 1939 the family left the house, and a few years later Lord Moyne was assassinated, while working for the UK Government as Minister of State in Cairo.

In these more peaceful times, Bailiffscourt is now a posh hotel where you can go to enjoy the peacocks and parkland over nice a cup of tea!

Quite such fun

APRIL 2017

When our artist Tom Evans came up with a particularly surreal idea for a card featuring Indian Runner ducks splashing around in the rain, we thought it would be fun to accompany the animation with an equally surreal "Duck Song". If we need a group of singers for a card, our normal partners in crime are the wonderful choir of Salisbury Cathedral, but they were in the USA on tour and unable to do the recording in the time we had available. Into the breach stepped the Aquae Sulis Chorale, a group of current and ex-choristers from Bath Abbey, who did a fantastic job at short notice. Many thanks to the choir, and to Shean and Bruce for their contributions in directing and recording the performance.

You should be able to hear the lyrics quite clearly, but some of our transatlantic fans might find the English accent hard to follow. They're not exactly great literature, but in case you're curious, here they are in full:

Drip drop drip drop! Ducks love water,
Drip drop pitter patter! Get wet? Doesn't matter!
Splish splash splish splash! Who'd 've thought a
Drip drop drip could be quite such fun!

And indeed, it's not often we have quite such fun putting together an ecard – we hope you enjoy it too!

Maggie's Centres

DECEMBER 2016

Our first Christmas card of 2016, White Christmas, is dedicated to the remarkable charity Maggie's Centres.

In May 1993, Maggie Keswick Jencks was told that her breast cancer had returned and was given months to live. In the time left to her, she and her husband Charles Jencks worked with her medical team to develop a new approach to cancer care.

In order to live more positively with cancer, Maggie and Charles believed you needed information that would allow you to be an informed participant in your medical treatment, stress-reducing strategies, psychological support and the opportunity to meet other people in similar circumstances in a relaxed domestic atmosphere.

Maggie's Centres are built in the grounds of NHS cancer hospitals, and they provide free practical, emotional and social support to people with cancer and their family and friends. They're places to find practical advice about benefits and eating well; places where qualified experts provide emotional support; places to meet other people; places where you can simply sit quietly with a cup of tea.

The first Maggie's Centre opened in Edinburgh in 1996 and since then Maggie's has continued to grow, with 19 Centres at major NHS cancer hospitals in the UK, online and abroad.

Please take the trouble to find out more about this remarkable charity, and consider making a seasonal donation.

Sound effects

SEPTEMBER 2016

A few weeks ago, quite out of the blue, we received an email saying that our ecards were all very nice, but that some of them could be really brought to life with a proper sound effects track running alongside the music. After a few moments pondering this thought, we decided our correspondent was quite right, and why hadn't we thought of that?

As it turned out, the email was from John "Fingers" Wood, who has over 50 years' experience of work as a sound engineer on dozens of films and TV programmes, from The Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour and Wind in the Willows to The Royle Family and Bob the Builder! Here's a link to his IMDB page.

So it took about five minutes for us to say "yes please, when can you start? – and you'll hear the results of this new collaboration in our forthcoming Halloween card. Prepare to be truly spooked!

Corona games

MAY 2016

I well remember as a teenager buying my first (and only) typewriter. It was an Olivetti, and this wonderful machine liberated me from my dreadful handwriting, allowing me to type newsletters for school societies, programmes for school concerts, and even the odd letter to friends and family. Just sitting in front of it made me feel like a famous novelist or daring war correspondent. It became part of me, an extension of my body, like my piano or my motorbike, until computers came along and changed the world.

A few years ago, a nostalgic whim took me to the pages of eBay where I purchased an even more ancient typewriter than my Olivetti – a Corona, dating from the 1930s (pictured in the above right). When the package arrived I opened it in front of my young daughter, who was fascinated.

"What is it, Dad?"

I explained it was a machine that people used to type letters and important documents, before the invention of computers.

"Oh cool. Has it got any games?"

National Autistic Society

DECEMBER 2015

You may have noticed that one of our recent Christmas cards was dedicated to the National Autistic Society, a charity which provides a huge range of support, information and services for those affected by autism. Here in the UK alone, around 700,000 people are on the autism spectrum and in the USA there are over 3.5 million, so the total number of people worldwide whose lives are affected on a daily basis by autism is enormous.

Our card can do very little by itself: but if you send it to your friends and family this Christmas, we hope that they'll click the logo at the end, and read about the marvellous work which the NAS undertake, and maybe even head over to their website to make a small donation.

The great thing about ecards is that unlike paper cards, people won't think you're a bit odd if you send more than one! So please, help promote awareness of autism and the NAS by sending Sleigh Ride to everyone you know.

Winter, 1901, Joseph Farquharson (1846-1935). Photo © Cardiff City Hall / Rob Watkins 2004

Frozen Mutton

SEPTEMBER 2015

One of the joys of working for jacquielawson.com is the unexpected directions in which the work can lead. Our forthcoming Advent Calendar will include a virtual art gallery (a bit like the one you may remember from our London Advent Calendar a few years ago), so we needed to research paintings of Christmassy or wintry scenes by Victorian artists. The task fell to me – or more accurately, to my wife, who coincidentally is studying for her MA in History of Art! – and she was able to introduce me to the wonderful work of Joseph Farquharson.

Farquharson's speciality was beautiful snowy scenes of his native Scotland, usually featuring cattle or sheep – to the point where he was nicknamed "Frozen Mutton Farquharson"! To achieve the greatest possible realism, Farquharson painted from a specially constructed mobile hut, complete with a big glass window and a stove to keep him warm.

This technique certainly seems to have done the trick. Maybe for our next Christmas card we should try sending a JL artist out into the snow in a hut on wheels!

Art of sailing

MAY 2015

Keen sailors may recognise the boat in this card as a SCOD, or South Coast One Design, designed in 1955 by Charles Nicholson. Around a hundred SCODs were built and most are still sailing – including one which took the title role in Woody Allen's 2007 film Cassandra's Dream. After a few days training off the east coast of England, Ewan McGregor and Colin Farrell apparently turned out to be quite good sailors!

The serene photo of two SCODS above was taken off Newtown Creek on the Isle of Wight – many thanks, Jaik! But the scenery in the paintings which are artfully brought together to make this card is that of the south coast of Devon, where our artist Bev Pask-Hughes lives.

When I asked Bev if she was keen on sailing herself, her laconic response was: "Oh no! Too wet! Can't swim!"

Merry-Go-Round

DECEMBER 2014

Christmas Markets, just like Christmas itself, are all about tradition: and one famous tradition of Christmas Markets here in Europe is the carousel or merry-go-round. If you opened your Advent Calendar on 4th December you'll have enjoyed watching Ted's fantastical ride. And earlier today, on a beautiful sunny morning here in the glorious Georgian city of Bath, I snapped the above shot of our own magnificent example.

The Bath carousel dates from Victorian times and as you can see, it's a wonderfully elaborate extravaganza of colour and light. On a chilly Monday morning there weren't many takers for rides, but when the evening comes and the city fills with families out for a Christmas shopping trip there'll be hordes of children clamouring for a turn on the merry-go-round, followed by a sizzling sausage sandwich and a cup of hot chocolate, while their parents warm their hands on a steaming paper cup of spicy mulled wine. What could possibly be more Christmassy?

Arts and Crafts

SEPTEMBER 2014

From time to time we like to gather the JL team together somewhere interesting to thrash out new ideas and seek inspiration. A few months ago, on a cold January day, we met for an afternoon at Rodmarton Manor (opens a new window), the beautiful Cotswold home of the Biddulph family.

The house was built, and all its furniture made, in the early decades of the 20th century, according to the ideals of the Arts and Crafts movement, which valued well-designed, locally-sourced, hand-made products in a reaction against poor quality industrialised manufacturing of the late Victorian period. No doubt to the amazement of their social peers, the Biddulphs lived modestly in one wing of the house, and opened the grand reception rooms to the public for community teaching, craft work, and artistic events – including puppet shows for the children of the village.

During the Second World War, Rodmarton became home to children evacuated from a London school under Operation Pied Piper, the wartime program devised to protect children from aerial bombing of cities. Quite by coincidence, we discovered just before our visit that amongst the young girls sent there in 1939 was one Ann Forsyth, elder sister of our very own Jacquie Lawson. Her memories of the place include the freezing cold chapel, terrible food – and masses of butterflies in the exquisite gardens.

Many thanks to John Biddulph, grandson of the original owners, for welcoming us to the house outside the normal season, and for his very interesting tour.

A Knight to remember

MARCH 2014

Some of the ideas for our ecards come from the unlikeliest places.

As related below, last year we had a team get-together in Oxford, and one of the items on the agenda was to visit some great English country houses, as part of our research for the Edwardian Advent Calendar. One of the houses we visited was Broughton Castle – a beautiful and fascinating mediaeval manor house which is the ancestral home of the 21st Baron Saye and Sele.

Our newest recruit, Tom Evans, was persuaded to do the tourist thing and dress up in a suit of armour for us all to photograph. Little did we know that this spark would light a fire in Tom’s imagination which culminated in one of our most popular Halloween cards ever: Halloween Knight (opens a new window)

If you’re ever in North Oxfordshire, we’d highly recommend a trip to Broughton Castle. Unlike so many old houses open to the public, Broughton Castle is still a family home, and that gives it a marvellous feeling of authenticity and history. And we even met His Lordship! – a delightful gentleman who seemed most concerned that we should enjoy our visit.

Her Ladyship

DECEMBER 2013

If you've opened your Edwardian Advent Calendar today (3rd December), you'll no doubt have had fun making flower arrangements, and maybe even trying to surpass the gorgeous displays designed by "Her Ladyship".

Her Ladyship is of course our own Bev Pask-Hughes, who not only designed the sample arrangements, but grew nearly all the flowers and foliage in her own garden, and then painted them and scanned the paintings into her computer.

The only plants which did not come from Bev's garden were the amaryllis, which is too tender to be grown outdoors in the UK, and the mistletoe, which grows widely but is hard to get established. One of Bev's ambitions when she retires is to grow mistletoe!

"Every Christmas my mother, and my grandmother before her, would fill a bowl with large white chrysanthemum blooms, and when we were researching the Advent Calendar we found that this was a common tradition in Edwardian times" says Bev. So for the first time this year, Bev grew chrysanthemums in her own garden, and with the help of our Advent Calendar, you can now feature her lovely white blooms in your own Christmas arrangement.

Sounds of Sarum

AUGUST 2013

We approached Salisbury Cathedral earlier this year to see if we could record the cathedral choir singing carols for incorporation into this year's Christmas productions. They agreed, so we're thrilled to be able to confirm that their wonderful singing will be featuring in this year's Advent Calendar as well as our Christmas ecard line up.

Our recording session with them took place in the Cathedral one evening a few weeks ago. We were very impressed by the professionalism and discipline of the young choristers – not to mention that wonderful, ethereal sound as they effortlessly hit the top notes! Towards the end of a gruelling three-hour recording session they were getting visibly tired, but they kept going resolutely, and we have some fantastic tracks in the can which are even now inspiring the team to give of their best. We're hugely grateful to everyone at Salisbury who helped make this possible and we can't wait to show off the results this Christmas.

Planning for Christmas

OCTOBER 2012

I just received an email from our local supermarket inviting me to reserve a turkey for Christmas. It's still only October, and I refuse to allow the ever-longer tentacles of the Christmas marketeers to force me to think about my family arrangements for Christmas just yet. And anyway, we usually do goose!

But in other ways, Christmas is of course very much on our minds, as indeed it appears to be on yours! No sooner had we released the new Circus (see below) than we were bombarded with email from members worried that all that work on the Circus meant we wouldn't be doing an Advent Calendar this year.

Fear not (said he, for mighty dread had seized their troubled minds)! This year our desktop (PC and Mac) offerings will be a brand new Advent Calendar, as well as the London calendar updated for 2012. Additionally, an iPad version of the London calendar is already available in the iTunes store, and we're hoping to release other tablet versions too! As ever, keep an eye open for our Newsletters for more information. (If you don’t currently get our newsletters, log on and click My Details, and make sure you’ve opted in – the check boxes are at the bottom of the page).

A distinctive style

JUNE 2012

If you look towards the bottom of our ecard category pages, you can still see some of the cards dating right back to the early days of this website, and it's fascinating to see how the style has evolved and yet in so many ways remained constant. As computers have grown more powerful and animation techniques have become more sophisticated, our cards have grown in sophistication and complexity; and of course, as new artists such as Sally Lisney and John Bloom have joined us, they've added their own distinctive touches. But in spite of this, all the cards – even the note card range – seem to have a certain style which makes them unmistakeably JL.

That may be about to change!

In a few weeks' time we'll be launching the first two cards in a brand new series. They're lightly animated sketches, humorous in content, and based on well-known quotations or epigrams. We hope they'll appeal in numerous situations where our existing ecards and note cards don't quite fit the bill: maybe to a more masculine audience (we're always being asked for more "man" cards!), or to younger viewers and those who don't want to spend 60 seconds or thereabouts watching a full-length ecard. Or just to people who aren't into dogs, cats, teddy bears and flowers!

The new range will of course be in addition to our existing ecards, which we'll continue to develop as before – so don't worry: Chudleigh, Bertie and all the others aren’t ready for retirement yet!

Round Robin

OCTOBER 2011

One of the great traditions of a British Christmas is the annual round-robin "family newsletter". Usually it comes from acquaintances with whom you thought (and maybe even hoped!) you'd lost touch, and is peppered with references to little Johnny's Distinction in his piano exam (when you know full well that little Johnny has bananas for fingers), and to exciting events such as the new kitten, the family caravanning holiday, and the village fete. And as often as not there's a photo of their wonderful children, just to remind you how cute they are.

Well, we're thrilled to be able to tell you that from this Christmas, you'll be able to send your annual round-robin letter electronically, courtesy of the Jacquie Lawson Christmas Letter! Of course, the artwork and music will be every bit as beautiful and tasteful as in any Jacquie Lawson ecard; and of course, since you are a Jacquie Lawson member, your round-robin letter will be highly erudite, full of witty remarks and literary references, and it won’t mention little Johnny's piano exam at all. But - thanks to the wondrous skills of our technical team - you will be able to include your own photo of your little darlings!

Christmas will never be the same again.

Nota Bene

MARCH 2011

Over the last decade or two, email has become such a part of our lives that we sometimes wonder how on earth we ever managed without it. But its convenience and informality come at a price. The format seems to encourage laziness in composition, and carelessly-written emails can often appear unintentionally abrupt or even downright rude.

And "smileys" are not an acceptable way of expressing ones feelings! ;-(

The whole process of composition and delivery make email one of the most intrinsically unattractive forms of correspondence ever invented. How can a monochrome message, harshly lit up on a computer screen in a functional but charmless typeface, ever compete for beauty with a hand-written letter, carefully composed on vellum with a green-inked fountain pen?

ecards, of course, provide an attractive electronic alternative to the bald and boring email, but sending someone a 60-second animation with background music to boot isn't appropriate for all circumstances.

Maybe our new note cards will help to fill the gap. They will allow our members to send the most attractive form of electronic correspondence we've yet seen, with gorgeous designs painted by Jacquie's team (see the above right), and with plenty of room for epistolary masterpieces, but with all the convenience of an ecard. Maybe they'll encourage people to compose their messages with more care, too.

And no smileys!

Manipulating a mood

SEPTEMBER 2010

It's fascinating sometimes to see how each ecard develops from initial sketches, through detailed drawings and paintings, and then into the digital domain with the addition of animation and effects. Often the scene can change dramatically through that process, as the examples to the right show. The first image is a painting of a pumpkin patch, painted by Bev Pask-Hughes (see below). The second is a screenshot from our forthcoming Halloween card, with a few electronically added effects (and a rather splendid tree)!

The new Halloween card will be released in mid-October and fans of Saint-Saens' Carnival of the Animals are in for a treat. But that's all I can give away right now!

Proper painting

SEPTEMBER 2009

Computers are wonderful things. But there are some things that are best left in what a scientist might call the analogue domain - the sphere of human endeavour that doesn't involve reducing everything to bits and bytes. Painting pictures is one of those things. For all the fancy digital tricks you can play in Photoshop and the like, there is nothing to beat the delicacy of colour and texture obtainable from a few paintbrushes and a carefully selected palette of watercolours, gouache, and so forth.

That's why many of the background scenes, floral designs, and other elements of Jacquie Lawson ecards are initially created not by manipulating pixels on a screen but by applying paint to paper, and Beverley Pask-Hughes is our resident master of this infinitely expressive art. Once the original paintings have been completed, they're scanned into the computer, trimmed and generally tidied up, and then the laborious process of animation starts.

And that is one of the many things that differentiate Jacquie Lawson ecards from the rest!

If you look carefully at the picture of Bev's desk in the above right you can see the beginnings of this year's Hallowe'en card. And in case you were wondering, Bev did tidy up her desk before this photo was taken. Yes, honestly.

In the new card, Bertie will be exploring the National Archives in Washington DC when he encounters a new friend... But we can't tell you any more without spoiling the surprise! The new card will be launched on our site in late June, and as usual we'll send all members an email to let them know when it's there.

Fourth of July

JUNE 2009

Celebrating the loss of our most troublesome colony?

jacquielawson.com has published a new ecard for Independence Day almost every year since the site was started. Being a British ecards site, this may seem rather odd - although perhaps you could argue that the loss of our most troublesome colony deserves to be celebrated! But in fact the first July 4th card was published in 2002 as a mark of goodwill to our transatlantic cousins after the horrific events of September 2001, and it was so popular with our members that July 4th became a firm date in the JL calendar.

Over the years we've featured Chudleigh raising the US flag, we've seen the Great Seal appear as a collage of aquatic life, we've explored all the State Flowers and all the State Birds, and we've even had a marching band made up of teddy bears. This year, the card has been created by Jacquie's niece Sally Lisney, and it features her spaniel Bertie, who you'll have seen in other recent cards such as Christmas Visitors.