Behind the scenes

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.

Musical Progression

December 2023

Back in 2002, when we first started making ecards, we – like most startups – had no money. If we needed someone to sing a Christmas carol, or play the violin or piano, hiring professionals simply wasn’t an option: it had to be one of us. So as a reluctant teenager I was roped in to play the violin on Shining Star , for example, while my sister, Meg, sang the carols for The Christmas Tree.

Fast forward twenty-odd years, and how things have changed! Meg and I are both now gainfully employed writing newsletters and FAQ pages and suchlike, while our Christmas carols are sung by professional choirs – Salisbury Cathedral, Bath Abbey – and next year, we have an amazing new collaboration to unveil!

Sadly, we’re not quite at the point where we hire a full orchestra to record our ecard music. Not only are the costs of that prohibitive, but were we to do so, we would be unable to make any last-minute edits once the recording was done. Instead, our orchestral music – like much TV and film music these days – is still “performed” by Mike’s computer!

But for more exposed instrumental parts, such as the cello solo from Bruch’s “Kol Nidrei” in Collage of Creation, we do now hire professional players. There’s something about a violin or cello solo that needs that inimitable human element – even when played by a reluctant teenager!

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!

Custom Cards

AUGUST 2023

From time to time, members ask us why it isn't possible to upload their own photos to embed in our cards, or to change the background scene, or to have a choice of music. There are two answers to this question.

The first is that we've always believed in creating ecards of high quality: cards which, were it possible technically, you would be proud to display on your mantelpiece. The music needs to match the mood of the animation and be timed precisely to the action; the colours, textures and media are carefully chosen to create an artistic whole; and so on.

The second answer is a technical one. Our cards are in fact simply short videos, and just like any other video, whether it's the latest BBC soap opera or the FA Cup Final, it is what it is. Once created, it's a static file which cannot easily be modified to include personalised bits and pieces at the whim of the user. All we do is add your personal message to the screen once the video has finished playing.

At least, that was the case until now. We recently made some new friends at Impossible Software, a company who specialise in creating videos on the fly. The technology is quite complex, but it allows us to vary certain elements of an ecard on demand. Our first project in this form is a birthday card which allows you to choose from three music tracks (one of which is the Happy Birthday song, another just alludes to it, and the third eschews it altogether!). You can also choose the season of the background scene – finally, an all-year card! – and add the name and (optionally!) the age of the recipient.

This doesn't mean that every card from now on will have these features: the first answer above is still true, and not every card would be suitable for this treatment. But we're already planning a Christmas card along similar lines, and future cards might include other customisable elements – the technology has a multitude of possibilities.

So please take a look at our newest and most advanced creation so far: a personalisable, dynamic birthday card!

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?!

Nocturnal Musings

FEBRUARY 2023

Sometime around 1826, in Warsaw, a young Polish teenager sat down at a piano and composed a short piece of music which he called “Nocturne”. Little could he have known that within just a few years he would be feted across Europe as a musical genius – nor indeed that nearly 200 years later, that short piece would be used as the accompaniment to the latest Jacquie Lawson ecard!

It is a masterwork of elegance in simplicity and somehow, even though it was composed at such a young age, it can be identified instantly as the work of Frédéric Chopin. The lyrical, expressive melodies, the rich harmonic progressions, and the feeling of melancholy and introspection that is almost synonymous with Chopin’s later nocturnes can all be found here too.

It does, however, pose a bit of a moral dilemma. Clearly, we think it’s a wonderful piece of music and are very glad to be able to listen to it – or even, for those skilled and practised enough, to play it – but Chopin himself disagreed. He did not publish it in his lifetime and even, on his deathbed, requested that all his unpublished manuscripts be destroyed. His wish was in vain: Chopin’s best friend, with the permission of the composer’s mother and sisters, published several works posthumously, including the E minor Nocturne

Is it wrong, therefore, to perform and listen to this piece – and for us, to use it in our ecard? It is hard to accept that spreading such beauty and joy can be wrong, but one cannot help but feel some level of remorse at further publicising a work which the composer himself wanted to remain unheard forever

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!

The Humane Society

DECEMBER 2022

There's a wonderful British tradition that Christmas cards are very often sold in aid of charities: this is, after all, the season of goodwill! And we've always felt a little guilty that our Christmas ecards might be detracting from those sales, valuable as they are to numerous worthy organisations. But finding a way of supporting charities directly through our ecards has always been difficult.

There's also a well-established custom here in the UK (and no doubt elsewhere) that successful companies establish partnerships with charities, with the aim of providing not only financial support but also much-needed publicity. So this year we decided that we too would select a charity to support – both with a donation and by giving them a big plug here on our website and in our newsletters.

Ever since Jacquie introduced her Labrador dog Chudleigh in her very first ecard, Christmas Cottage, animals have been a cornerstone of our cards. When Sally Lisney joined us a couple of years later, her own pets – Bertie, Figaro, and Twink – gained starring roles, and our cast of animal characters has grown and grown to the point where you'd be hard pressed to find a Jacquie Lawson card without an animal peeking out from somewhere.

So the charity we've chosen for our support this year is Humane Society International. HSI is an exceptional charity working to stop cruelty to animals on every front, all around the world. From protecting pets from neglect and abuse to fighting to end the trophy hunting of endangered species, their work has been driving positive change for over 30 years. Recent successes include discussions with a major UK clothing retail group that resulted in their long-term pledge to go fur-free, and the closure of 17 dog -meat farms and one dog and cat slaughterhouse so far under their "Models for Change" program in South Korea and Vietnam. If you'd like to read more about their work or make a donation yourself, please visit their website.

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!

Queen Elizabeth II

SEPTEMBER 2022

In the short time since the death of Queen Elizabeth II, the airwaves and the internet have been inundated with beautiful tributes and heartfelt messages of sympathy. Here at Jacquie Lawson, there was one simple anecdote which made us both laugh and cry, and we wanted to share it with you.

In his book "Ever the Diplomat: Confessions of a Foreign Office Mandarin", Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, sometime British ambassador to Saudi Arabia, tells the story of how Crown Prince Abdullah, de facto leader of that country – which at the time did not allow women even to drive cars – was invited to Balmoral Castle to lunch with the Queen.

Following the meal, he was asked if he would like a tour of the estate in the royal Land Rover. No doubt he was expecting that some uniformed servant would be at the wheel; but no, it was the Queen herself who proceeded to tear around the narrow roads of the estate, prompting the Crown Prince to implore her to slow down. Perhaps if he had done his research, he would have known that Her Majesty was trained during the Second World War as an ambulance driver!

In 2018, the law in Saudi Arabia was finally changed so as to allow women to drive.

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.

Heart of the Home

APRIL 2022

Pride of place on my kitchen bookshelf is reserved for the works of Elizabeth David. She had an extraordinary life: rebelling against the expectations of an upper-class English family, she travelled with her lover by boat from England to Antibes and then Sicily, where she was briefly held as a suspected spy. She then went via Yugoslavia to Greece, but in 1941 was forced to flee the invading Germans and escaped to Cairo. Back in London after the war she started to write about cookery – and in the following decades she introduced thousands of English people who had never cooked with such exotic ingredients as aubergines, basil, garlic or olive oil, to the delights of Mediterranean cuisine.

In "French Country Cooking" she wrote, with characteristic elegance and directness:

"Some sensible person once remarked that you spend the whole of your life either in your bed or in your shoes. Having done the best you can by shoes and bed, devote all the time and resources at your disposal to the building up of a fine kitchen. It will be, as it should be, the most comforting and comfortable room in the house."

That was published in 1951, and since then the burgeoning kitchen design industry has helped ensure that countless people the world over have followed her advice, spending hour upon hour creating the perfect décor for their kitchen, choosing subtle paint colours, obsessing over light fittings, and eyeing up shiny worktops.

And this, of course, is why we chose the kitchen as the next expansion pack for the Jacquie Lawson Country Cottage! You've completed your cosy sitting room and perfectly pruned your summer garden, and now you can design your very own immaculate country kitchen. But instead of spending thousands on a real one, you can have all that fun for the price of a coffee – and then do it again, and again. After all, as David's contemporary Julia Child once said, there's no end to imagination in the kitchen!

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!

Christmas cutout

DECEMBER 2021

Following on from my equally alliterative Paper Posies post below, it seems that ideas for new cards, and for new ways of making them, just keep on coming.

The inspiration for our Christmas Cutout card originated (as so often) with a paper equivalent: 3D pop-up cards. And having come up with a rough design, Bev then spent hour after hour after hour with sheets of paper and a tiny pair of scissors, cutting out an entire forest of trees, not to mention the animals and undergrowth and everything else that went into the card. Apparently she was trailing tiny paper offcuts around her house and garden for days afterwards!

Once all these pieces of paper had been cut out and scanned, it was David's job to bring them to life and create a pretty wintry scene. A nice selection of music by Grieg was added as accompaniment – et voilà!

Although we called it Christmas Cutout (JL fans will be familiar with our alliteration addiction) it actually makes an attractive card for any general wintry greetings, not just for Christmas. We hope you like it!

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!

Sveta Dorosheva

SEPTEMBER 2021

I've just realised it's been several months since my last post on this page. The summer seems to have flown by – and most of it has been spent preparing our new 2021 Advent Calendar, as well as the Summer Garden expansion for our Country Cottage.

But in the meantime we've kept up a regular flow of new ecards too, and to help with the production of these we're occasionally able to commission new art from freelance artists all over the world. This is very satisfying because as well as supporting some very talented artists, we get to work with new styles and approaches.

Our most recent card at the time of writing features truly beautiful work by a Ukrainian-born artist called Sveta Dorosheva. The card features a classic English country house and its gardens, and the intricacy and detail of her painting is a joy to see.

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.

Keeping up appearances

APRIL 2021

For those of us over a certain age (and without being overly indiscreet I can confirm that a fair proportion of the JL team would include themselves in this category, as well as the vast majority of our members!), there is one thing which we lacked for much of our adult life, and which has truly revolutionised that of younger generations: the internet and more specifically, access thereto via mobile phones.

Imagine a world where if you got lost in a city at night, you were unable to check your location on a phone, and unable to phone someone for help (unless you happened across a phone box which hadn't been vandalised); a world where travel abroad had to be booked via a travel agent who specialised in the complexities of airline bookings and foreign hotels, and where if you ran out of travellers' cheques you had to cut the holiday short and get home, fast! And of course, a world without ecards.

Life has been made so much easier in so many ways by that miraculous little device in your pocket. And now, even your favourite ecards service has embraced its possibilities: we now have an App!

The Jacquie Lawson Ecards app is designed to make sending your ecards easier than ever before. It's totally free: just download and log in using the same email address and password that you use for our website. You'll immediately find two huge benefits of the app: you can use your phone's contacts list as well as your Jacquie Lawson Address Book, and you can share ecards using your phone's built-in sharing features (including Facebook, WhatsApp, text message etc.).

More details here. Why not download it now and give it a whirl?

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.

Nordic novelty

DECEMBER 2020

One of the joys of developing this year's "Nordic" Advent Calendar has been the discovery of a whole new world of Christmas traditions, recipes, art and literature. The mischievous antics of nissen and tomtarna, the large straw Yule Goats erected in towns and cities, the rather scary Yule Lads from Iceland ... all these and more have given us a wealth of new material to entertain you.

The music too has been given a welcome facelift. Two melancholy but exquisite Finnish songs were sung for us very beautifully (at home, during lockdown!) by the Finnish soprano Uli Kontu-Korhonen. And at the other end of the scale, the lively and slightly ridiculous Swedish song Ritsch, ratsch, filibombombom earned itself a place alongside several other fun, upbeat Christmas melodies from the countries on the top of the world.

We genuinely think this is our best Advent Calendar yet, so we do hope you all enjoy it too!

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!

New technology

NOVEMBER 2020

It's really hard to believe that this is the eleventh year of our Advent Calendars. What started back in 2010 as a shot in the dark, stretching the Adobe AIR platform to its limits, has become (from what we read on our Facebook page) an unmissable part of Christmas for thousands of people across the world – not to mention a massive addition to our annual workload, forcing us to think about Santa and tinsel from about February onwards!

This year, it's our normally unsung tech team who are the shining stars in our Advent firmament. Some years ago we moved away from Flash and AIR, and the Advent Calendar became an HTML5 browser-based app. This had the advantage that it would run on almost any device, including iPhones and iPads. But it was never as slick or as pretty, and many people missed the ability to download the Advent Calendar to their computers. And the cookies were a sticky issue too!

So this year Zac, Phil, Eric and their colleagues have been working incredibly hard to redevelop the Advent Calendar from scratch, using a games engine called Unity. This enables us to offer "Nordic" not only as a downloadable program for PC and Mac, but also as a native app for iPhones and iPads, and another for Android phones and tablets.

The result is amazing. The program runs so much faster and more smoothly, and the graphics are so much clearer and more detailed, going right up to full 4K resolution on suitable devices. And on phones and tablets, the native apps are much easier to use and the graphics look incredible.

The only real downside is that the IOS and Android apps aren't interchangeable with the PC/Mac version: you have to buy the correct app for the platform you want to use it on. The PC/Mac version is sold on our website, but the IOS and Android apps are only available via the official Apple and Google app stores.

We hope you all love the new format as much as we do!

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!

Broyé du Poitou

AUGUST 2020

The Broyé du Poitou, or Broyé poitevin, is a traditional biscuit from the ancient French region of Poitou. Such is the importance the French attach to their culinary heritage, there's an association dedicated exclusively to the protection and promotion of this biscuit. It goes by the wonderful title of La Confrérie de l'Ordre des Chevaliers de la Grand'Goule – "The Brotherhood of the Order of the Knights of the Great Ghoul" – the Great Ghoul being a legendary dragon which used to terrorise the poor people of Poitiers.

The word goule is also an old French word for mouth, which survives today in the local Charentais dialect. So perhaps this is a French pun, and it's really the Order of the Knights of the Big Mouth. Given the size of the biscuit – it can be anything up to a metre in diameter – this is quite appropriate. Traditionally the Broyé du Poitou is broken into pieces at the table by bringing the fist sharply down into the centre. Indeed, the word "broyé" simply means "broken".

It's easy to make and delicious to eat – and there are as many recipes as there are Poitevin grandmothers from whom they have been handed down. They agree with remarkable consistency on the ingredients and proportions, and on the decoration and cooking, but differ in the method of preparing the dough – do you mix the egg and sugar first, then the butter, then the flour, or in some other sequence? We've successfully tried several approaches (it's a hard life here at JL), including simply chucking the whole lot in the food processor and blitzing it for a few seconds. That worked surprisingly well.

But our new card featuring the recipe is based on the method recommended by the Confrérie, except that we've halved their quantities – otherwise you end up with a biscuit large enough to feed a dragon! We've also suggested an optional (but no doubt heretical) ingredient from the neighbouring Charentes region which we think adds a little je ne sais quoi: a dash of cognac.

And finally, the hard bit. Unless you're adept in French, you may be wondering how on earth to pronounce the name of this biscuit. Well, it goes something like ...

brrr-why-ay d'you p'what-oo!

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.

Covid-19

MARCH 2020

Here in the UK, the jacquielawson.com team feel very lucky. Being confined to our homes is not that different from normal, since we all work from home anyway; and our business is unaffected by the crisis – indeed if anything, we've seen a slight upsurge as people use ecards to keep in touch with friends and family.

But in the meantime, our thoughts are very much with those who are more deeply affected by the COVID-19 virus, whether directly through illness or the death of loved ones, by the loss of jobs or income, or simply by the loneliness of lockdown.

And to all our members, past and present, we send our very best wishes for the coming months. Take care, observe the precautions being advised in your country, and hopefully we'll all be able to go back to normal life in the not too distant future.

The picture above is of the glorious gardens at Hidcote, where the JL team gathered on one of our regular inspiration-searching trips about this time last year. We're all looking forward to our next gathering, even if we don't know exactly when or where it will be!

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.

Peacock fantasy

DECEMBER 2019

Peacocks are not usually associated with Christmas, but when we came across a wonderful photograph of a pure snow-white peacock against a dark background, it looks so much like some kind of Christmas decoration that we couldn't resist the idea of making an ecard based on these magnificent creatures.

White peafowl have a genetic condition called leucism, which affects the development of pigmented cells in their feathers. It's found also in lions, horses and even hedgehogs, giving the latter a coat of lovely blonde spines!

With Tchaikovsky's brilliant Dance of the Sugarplum Fairy to accompany the proceedings, and the addition of a white rabbit for a yet more surreal touch, we ended up with a truly fantastical Christmas card. But I do sometimes wonder what dubious substances the art team must be taking to come up with these ideas!

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!

Moonlit mood

OCTOBER 2019

The making of our annual Halloween ecard is one of the highlights of the year here at JL. Conjuring up spooky lighting effects, eerie imagery and sinister-sounding music to frighten the poor recipients of our cards, is all actually tremendous fun!

The background art for year's card was inspired by the work of John Atkinson Grimshaw, one of the greatest British painters of the Victorian era. He was famous for his moody portrayals of moonlit scenes, especially of city streets and dockyards, and the vivid, realistic detail which he put into his work led some critics to question "whether they could be accepted as paintings at all"!

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.

The Letdown

MAY 2019

There's an entertaining Australian comedy series available on Netflix called The Letdown. It follows the life of Audrey, a new mum navigating the ups and downs of parenthood.

The show is the brainchild of Sarah Scheller and Alison Bell, who also plays Audrey, and many scenes in the series are drawn from theirs and their friends' own real life experiences. So when Alison received a Jacquie Lawson ecard from a friend, she decided that Audrey, too, would receive one in the show.

And so it is that our card Birthday Band, has a starring role in the opening scene of the second season, which launches on Netflix later in the year.

At the risk of a slight spoiler, I should warn our fans that in the show, it transpires that Audrey strongly disapproves of ecards and that she prefers more traditional forms of correspondence. Ah well, you can't please everyone. But it's still nice to see one of our ecards on the telly!

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!

Curio Collection

MARCH 2019

Well, here it is! Our latest extravaganza of animation, music, games, puzzles, creative challenges and Easter Eggs (see November 2018, below)!

To set yourself in the mood for this one I think you have to go back a hundred years or so, when it wasn't possible to jump into a metal tube and be whisked across the Atlantic in a matter of hours; when you couldn't get a supply of local currency just by poking a plastic card into a machine; when a souvenir meant more than a t-shirt purchased from the duty-free shop on your way back; and when travelling to far-flung continents was not without its dangers and truly represented a step into the unknown.

The setting for the Curio Collection is the sitting-room of a seasoned traveller from such an era. It is full of exotic souvenirs, curiosities and memorabilia gathered from all over the world. And you can explore this magical space, clicking (or if you're on a touch-screen, poking – which is a much more appropriate metaphor) all these strange and wonderful objects. Each of them will reveal a different secret.

It's not quite the same as taking the Trans-Siberian Express or a steamer up the Nile, but you can always dream. And the Curio Collection is yours for the price of a pint!

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!

The silver line

DECEMBER 2018

Christmas is a time when many of us reach out to elderly friends and relatives who would otherwise be alone over the festive season. But for the rest of the year, it can be only too easy for older people living on their own to feel terribly isolated.

The Silver Line is a charity which was created to alleviate loneliness in older people. It offers a free confidential telephone helpline, as well as telephone and letter-based friendship schemes, and a variety of other support services.

We know from our own research that Jacquie Lawson ecards are particularly popular with the over-65s, so we're delighted to dedicate our second major Christmas card release for 2018 to The Silver Line.

One of the nice things about ecards is that unlike paper cards, people won't think you're odd if you send more than one! So even if you've already earmarked other cards for your friends and family, please help The Silver Line by sending Silent Night too!

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.

Easter eggs

NOVEMBER 2018

Computer techies seem to have a penchant for coming up with imaginative jargon to describe mundane technical stuff. An error in a program is a "bug". When your web browser stores data on your computer, it's a "cookie". When a little message appears on your Android phone, it's "toast" (because it pops up, obviously). And when a programmer hides a secret feature or message in a program or game, it's an "Easter egg".

If you read (as we do) all the comments on our Facebook page, and all the responses to our regular member surveys, you'd see that Easter eggs are probably the most popular feature of our Advent Calendars (and English Garden). Of course, our correspondents don't call them that: they talk about "secret features" or "hidden surprises". But our programmers call them Easter eggs, and in response to popular demand, they've included more than ever before in this year's Edinburgh Advent Calendar.

I'm not going to reveal too much here, because half the fun of Easter eggs is finding them. But your "Edinburgh home" is a particularly good hunting ground. Click the blue star to go there!

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!

Flipping the flautist

JUNE 2018

We are indebted to several fans for pointing out a terrible error in our English Garden: the flautist whose little statue decorates the pond has his flute the wrong way round! As a company we pride ourselves on getting things like that correct, so it was particularly galling that none of us – not even the musicians amongst us – had spotted the error.

Like most modern instruments, the modern concert flute is essentially right-handed. This wasn't always the case: when a flute was simply a pipe with holes to be covered by the fingers, you could play it either way round – and indeed if you frequent the traditional music venues of Ireland you'll often see the Irish flute (which is based on a 19th century design) being played left-handed.

But over the years more complex keys and levers were introduced to the classical flute, culminating in 1847 with the Boehm system which is still in use today; and to accommodate these changes, at some point someone decided that henceforth, all flutes would poke out to the right of the player.

There is some sense in this discipline: imagine a cramped concert hall, or a marching band, perhaps, with flutes poking out in different directions! And to play the flute well, both hands need to be equally dextrous anyway.

So we're delighted (and not a little relieved) to announce that within the next few weeks there'll be an update coming to your English Garden which will flip our flautist around so he's playing correctly – along with a host of other enhancements and additions. Keep an eye on our newsletters for more details.

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.

My Lady Hunsdon's Puffe

JULY 2018

We were recently discussing the choice of music for a card inspired by traditional printmaking techniques, and someone suggested some lute music by the Renaissance composer John Dowland. Objections that 16th century music made a poor match for the 20th century artistic style of the card were brushed aside: apparently this was exactly the sort of music to which a 20th century artist might listen while working on her printmaking!

The next task was to choose a specific piece, and My Lady Hunsdon's Puffe was selected partly because unusually for Dowland, it's cheerful! Dowland was so well known for his melancholy style that he self-consciously named one of his pieces Semper Dowland, semper dolens (Latin: Always Dowland, always lamenting).

Dowland was fond of naming pieces after his contemporaries: other examples include Captain Digorie Piper his Galliard and My Lord Willoughby's Welcome Home. But what exactly he meant by My Lady Hunsdon's Puffe is something of a mystery. The piece is an almain (or allemande – a lively German dance) so maybe the word "puffe" suggests the dancer's exertions. But Lady Hunsdon (pictured in the above left) was a prominent figure at the court of Elizabeth I, and a Lady of the Privy Chamber, no less: it's hard to imagine her huffing and puffing as she danced an almain!

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.

Garden time

MARCH 2018

We've always been amazed – and flattered – when members tell us that they, or their children or grand-children, are still playing with our Advent Calendars well into the New Year – and, presumably, subjecting their families to the accompanying Christmas music, long after everyone is heartily sick of all that Ding Dong Merrily!

So for a while now we've been wondering how we could recreate the magic of an Advent Calendar in a product for year-round use. And if you've been following our newsletters, you'll know that we've just released the new Jacquie Lawson English Garden with that aim in mind.

Part of the fun of an Advent Calendar is the daily reveal of something new, so one question which exercised us for many hours was how to manage the garden's internal calendar. Should we unlock something new every day, starting from the date you first open the garden? Should we just let you access everything on Day 1? We wanted that element of excitement, with something new appearing each day, but we didn't want to force the user to a rigid timescale.

We ended up with a gradual reveal of activities, games and so on over twelve separate days – but the internal calendar only advances on days that you actually visit the garden. So you can miss several days and when you come back, the calendar will only have advanced by one day.

Of course, you can carry on enjoying the fun – >sowing your seeds, planting and replanting your flowerbeds and borders, and playing the games and puzzles – for as long as you like after those first twelve days are over. In that respect it's just like our Advent Calendars, and at least you won't have to listen to Christmas carols while you do it!

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.

Anonymous amours

FEBRUARY 2018

When I were a lad, which is a long time ago, the sending and receiving of Valentine's cards was a somewhat bizarre ritual, at least between those not in established relationships. If you were lucky enough to receive a card, you had no way of finding whether you'd hit the jackpot and the sender was indeed the girl or boy whose attention you craved, or whether you actually had a secret admirer of whom you had previously been unaware. And meanwhile, you'd send a card to the object of your love, hoping madly that he or she wouldn't think it was from someone else.

Because, of course, Valentine's Day cards were always unsigned. To put your name on a card was considered frightfully bad form.

I don't know if people still send paper Valentine cards in this way, but we do occasionally get requests from members to send anonymous Valentine ecards. Sadly, however, the technicalities of the internet, the risk of abuse, and the need to get our emails through spam filters all conspire to make it almost impossible for an ecard to be sent anonymousl

Shame, really – it was all quite exciting, even if with today's sensibilities it seems a little odd!

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

The Church Door

DECEMBER 2017

A visitor to the beautiful village of Lurgashall in West Sussex cannot fail to notice the central cricket green, the Noah's Ark pub, and the ancient cottages surrounding the green. But tucked away in a corner near the pub, and hidden from view by trees, is the equally beautiful church of St Laurence.

The oldest part of the church is early Norman, while the tower dates from the 14th century. But perhaps the most interesting architectural feature is a very unusual wooden gallery running along the southwestern wall of the nave. Built in the late 16th century, it once housed the village school!

As can be seen in the photo above, the opening to the gallery has no door. This presented a problem when we were making our latest Christmas card, since Bertie needed somewhere to hang his painstakingly-prepared wreath. No problem: with a little poetic licence and some clever artwork, a beautiful 16th century oak door was constructed especially for the occasio

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!

Advent advice

OCTOBER 2017

We're getting close to the time when our latest Advent Calendar is exposed, with a fanfare of trumpets, to the scrutiny of our loyal fans. While the basic concept hasn't changed much since 2010, almost every year sees some changes – to accommodate developments in technology, or to add fun new features, or to improve the experience in some other way.

The first and second Advent Calendars ("Village" and "London") featured a single, full-screen scene designed only for desktop computers; then we introduced a secondary, indoor scene where you could curl up with a jigsaw puzzle and various other entertainments; and by the time of "Edwardian" we had several secondary scenes, and things were getting a bit out of hand! Then, to allow for the small screen on an iPad, we brought in horizontal scrolling and a three-layer parallax design, and all the games and puzzles from the secondary scene were brought into that main scrolling scene.

This, it transpired, was not popular – you liked your cosy secondary scene! – so we're pleased to be able to announce that this year, it's back! The bare bones of the scene are shown above ... for now, we'll just let you imagine where it is, and how we might decorate it.

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!

Advent venue

JULY 2017

Our first Advent Calendar, way back in 2010, was set in an indeterminate European village – we didn't really think too hard about the location back then. But in the years since then, the need to keep things fresh and fun has led us to a variety of amazing settings. We've had a festive trip to London, we've spent Christmas in a country house in the Edwardian era, we've shopped till we dropped at a Christmas Market, and last year we got our feet wet at an English seaside resort!

So, where are we going for Christmas 2017? Somewhere pretty and Christmassy, of course. We need snow, too: snow is an essential part of the Christmas tradition, even though in London the chances of a white Christmas are only about one in 17! A bit of history will lend interest, while some dramatic scenery and the opportunity for fun outdoor pursuits will keep us amused throughout the countdown to Christmas.

Above is a snapshot of work in progress for one of the interior scenes. Maybe you can guess the country we're heading for?

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!

Barnardo's

DECEMBER 2016

We've dedicated our second major release of 2016 – Christmas Lights – to the well-known children's charity Barnardo's.

Nineteenth-century London was a city with many problems. The industrial revolution caused a dramatic increase in population, and into this cauldron of bad housing, unemployment, poverty and disease there arrived in 1866 a 21-year-old Irishman, Thomas Barnardo, intending to train as a doctor with a view to becoming a medical missionary in China.

A few months after his arrival an outbreak of cholera swept through the East End with catastrophic effects on poor families, and Barnardo decided to give up his dream of going to China and to devote himself instead to helping destitute children.

In 1870, still only 25 years of age, Barnardo opened his first home in East London, where boys were trained in carpentry, metal work and shoemaking to enable them to secure apprenticeships and work. By the time he died 35 years later, the charity he founded had opened 96 homes caring for more than 8,500 children.

Since then the focus of the charity has of course changed dramatically to meet the needs of today's young people, and their services include counselling for children who have been abused, fostering and adoption services, vocational training and disability inclusion groups. You can read much more about their wonderful work on their website.

Please send Christmas Lights to your friends and family this Christmas; and maybe you and your recipients might consider making a small seasonal donation to help Barnardo's with their valuable work.

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.

Two Cats

OCTOBER 2016

Many of you will recognise Rossini's Duet for Two Cats as the basis of the music in our latest Halloween card – without the singing cats, but spooked up instead with a touch of orchestral colour and some great sound effects (see below).

The Duet for Two Cats has an interesting history, not least because it isn't by Rossini! It was the little-known Danish composer Christoph Weyse (top left) who in 1812 came up with the idea of a Katte-Kavatine (or Cat Song) with miaows for lyrics. The unknown compiler of the Duet for Two Cats took Weyse's song, changed it from 3/4 to 4/4 time, and then tacked on a couple of tunes from Rossini's opera Otello, with the original lyrics replaced by more miaows, to form the piece we know today.

No-one knows for sure who was responsible for putting it all together, but for some reason Rossini (bottom left) usually gets the credit. And yet it's the sinuous felinity of Weyse's melody, and the crazy humour of his original idea, which give the piece its real charm.

The Duet is usually sung by two sopranos, and accompanied ad libitum by feline frolics which make it well worth hunting down a good recording. One of my favourite performances is that by the divine Dr. Evadne Hinge and Dame Hilda Bracket.

And if you haven't heard of Hinge and Bracket ... well, you must be younger than me!

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!

A cut above the rest

JUNE 2016

The musical accompaniment for our new Father's Day card was a forgone conclusion: it had to be a barbershop quartet. Thanks to a recommendation from my friend Pippa, we got in touch with Tagline Quartet, winners of the British Association of Barbershop Singers national contest in 2015. And after a few hours one Sunday morning in a tiny London studio, we had a fabulous recording in the can.

The music is an arrangement of "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow", with some silly lyrics written specially for the card. Words that rhyme with "fellow" are a little thin on the ground so we took a few liberties! But I also had to mug up on the somewhat esoteric technicalities of barbershop style: I hope I gave them enough of those ringing sevenths.

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?"

Mozart uncut

MARCH 2016

We use a great number of classical masterpieces (and lesser works too!) as the musical accompaniment for our ecards, and it's always a shame to have to reduce them to a mere minute or so in order to fit the animation. But equally, we pride ourselves on choosing and arranging music which fits each card perfectly in mood, tempo and overall duration, so we have little choice.

When we went to Salisbury Cathedral last week to record Mozart's beautiful little motet Ave Verum Corpus, we decided to try something new. We had already worked out a reasonably musical way of cutting the Mozart to 76 seconds, as required for the ecard, and that was soon in the can.

But while we were there, why not also record the entire piece, and provide it as an MP3 download to accompany the card? That way, senders and recipients of the card could listen to Mozart's music as Mozart intended – or as he might have intended, if they'd had iPods in 1791!

On a PC or Mac, you can download the MP3 file directly from the ecard or by right-clicking the image above and taking "Save as ...". Once you've downloaded it you can import it into iTunes or transfer it to your phone or tablet. If you only have an iPad or iPhone then you can still click the image above to play the music.

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.

Traditional Toys

NOVEMBER 2015

For the Victorians, the family was the foundation-stone of society, and our artist Tom Evans has enjoyed creating some delightful scenes of Victorian family life for our Advent Calendar. His own family have been his inspiration, and while much has changed since those times, some of their toys are as familiar to children today as they were to their Victorian predecessors: jigsaw puzzles, dolls' houses, tea-sets and alphabet bricks.

If you study your Advent Calendar carefully (as we're sure you do) you may spot a little girl learning to read, just like Tom's own daughter Polly, who is now of the age where she brings a book back from school every evening. But when her reading's done, Polly can do something which no Victorian child could dream of – she can play with the Advent Calendar on her Dad's iPad!

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!

Cobbled together

JUNE 2015

It's late June and the sun is shining, but most of us here at JL are thinking about snow and fairy lights and tinsel. Yes, production of our new 2015 Advent Calendar is well under way – and this year we've got our work cut out, because we're going for full iPad compatibility too.

So we thought you might be amused to see a little of the work in progress. It looks like Santa has left his red coat at home – as well he might, in June! We love his red and white socks. Maybe he's getting some new boots? We're not sure ... but all will become clear in December!

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!"

Lent Lily

MARCH 2015

The sight of pale yellow-tinged daffodil buds pushing up through the cold soil is an encouraging signal that winter is retreating. In ecclesiastical circles especially, the daffodil is sometimes known as the Lent Lily, and tradition says that the flower will open on Ash Wednesday and die on Easter Day – a tradition immortalised in A.E. Housman's poem "The Lent Lily":

Housman once joked rather self-deprecatingly that he always consented to having his poetry set to music "in the hope of becoming immortal somehow". But when no less a composer than Ralph Vaughan Williams had the temerity to omit a section of one poem, Housman reacted furiously: "I wonder how he would like me to cut two bars out of his music?"

Our forthcoming Easter card features a brand new musical setting of The Lent Lily, sung by our young friends at Salisbury Cathedral Choir. But we have a confession: to keep the song within the one minute straitjacket of the ecard, we were forced to omit the second verse. Our apologies to AEH.

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?

Sea tractor

OCTOBER 2014

In the British Isles you can never be more than 70 miles from the sea, and our jagged cliffs and sandy beaches constantly beckon those in search of rest or recreation.

A few weeks ago the team met up on the coast of Devon to spend a few days bouncing ideas around in the search for mutual inspiration. We were staying near Salcombe, and the easiest way to get from our hotel into the town was by sea – the local roads are hair-raisingly narrow and twisty. To that end, parked on the beach next to the hotel was something new to all of us: a sea tractor.

Initial investigation showed it to be no more than a motorised platform on wheels. Surely this clumsy-looking contraption couldn’t take us all the way to Salcombe?

Indeed not: it transpired that the sea tractor simply takes you down the beach and far enough into the sea to act as a mobile jetty. A little ferryboat meets the tractor at agreed times and takes you the rest of the way.

Necessity is the mother of invention, and we loved the simple brilliance of the idea, and the way it reflected the resourcefulness of people for whom the sea is a daily challenge.

I don’t know if the sea tractor directly inspired any new ecard ideas, but the salty air and autumnal sunshine certainly left us refreshed and ready for the Christmas rush.

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.

Lulajże Jezuniu

JULY 2014

It's July, so we're preparing for Christmas!

One of the challenges involved in producing a new Advent Calendar every year is to find around 25 pieces of music to accompany each day's animation. Of course, all the old favourites need to be in there – Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy – and we can also have fun with arrangements of popular carols in unusual styles, such as the hula illustrated below! But it's important also to bring in some completely new melodies, and this year we've looked for inspiration from a rich tradition of Christmas music from continental Europe.

One of our selections is a beautiful Polish carol called Lulajże Jezuniu, to be sung in the original Polish by our friends at Salisbury Cathedral Choir. This caused a few raised eyebrows – German and French were no problem at all for the choristers, but Polish pronunciation was something new to them. But they rose magnificently to the challenge and we have a lovely recording in the can.

Incidentally, if you know Chopin's piano music, you'll already know the melody of Lulajże Jezuniu: it's the middle theme in his B minor Scherzo.

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.

An imaginary manor

DECEMBER 2013

One of the most attractive jobs of 2013 was to dream up a magnificent mansion as the imaginary location for our new Edwardian Advent Calendar. This enviable task fell to one of our most experienced and talented artists, Sally Lisney.

The job required Sally not only to design the principal views of the house and gardens, but also to come up with ideas for twenty-five daily animations, as well as the beautiful settings required for each: the kitchen, pantry, nursery and so on – not to mention a magnificent orangery which Sally created from scratch to show off a huge Christmas tree.

Many visits ensued to fabulous old houses as far apart as Saltash in Cornwall and Blenheim in Oxfordshire. After a few were rejected for being too old or too young, too austere or too florid, Sally chose Kingston Lacy in Dorset as her model for the main facade.

As Sally says, "Kingston Lacy has long been one of my favourites. The front and rear views are based upon this beautiful house, and the entrance drive, lake and bridge are inspired by Chatsworth and Lyme Park."

"I suspect that Mr Darcy had a hand in my daydreams…"

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.

Share a snowflake

NOVEMBER 2013

Our annual Advent Calendar has always included a few games which let you design your own something – whether it's Christmas stockings, wreaths, or even snowflakes. In fact our snowflake maker is probably the single most popular game in all the Advent Calendars so far – so much so that we've included it again this year.

What’s new this year is that all the “design your own” games will have the ability to save your designs (as JPG files) so you can share them with others – not just your friends and family, but the wider public too. With that in mind we're encouraging people to use the hashtag: #JLAdventCalendar

You can try it out right now! This year's version includes more games and puzzles than ever before to entertain you while you wait for the calendar to open on December 1st, and one of the games available throughout November is – yes, you guessed it – the snowflake maker.

So fire up your Edwardian Advent Calendar, head on down to the Pavilion and design yourself some snowflakes. And then show off your skills on Facebook, Pinterest or whatever takes your fancy.

Just remember to use the hashtag: #JLAdventCalendar

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.

Inspiration

JUNE 2013

I can't believe it's over six months since my last contribution to this page. So much has been happening it's easy to let things like this slip.

One of the highlights of the last few months was a team get-together in Oxford. Most of the JL artistic team work from home, so it's really important from time to time to have a session where we all meet up face-to-face and throw a few ideas around. And we try to choose a location which we think will help inspire new ideas, so Oxford – my old alma mater – seemed like a fine choice.

And indeed it was: we had a great time splashing through the rain to admire the dreaming spires, between productive sessions to thrash out new ideas. One such was our latest card (opens a new window) for Father's Day – I can't imagine how the idea of a classic car rally sprang out of a pint in an Oxford pub. But then again, that same pub apparently helped inspire the creation of hobbits, orcs and magic rings, so maybe I shouldn't be surprised. It must be something in the beer.

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).

The Circus is coming!

SEPTEMBER 2012

From the chariot races and gladiator fights of Ancient Rome to the freak shows and menageries of the Victorian era, from the spectacular displays of the Moscow State Circus to contemporary nouveau cirque, circuses have long been part of our culture. Most of us will have fond childhood memories of the excitement, sounds and smells of the Big Top. The circus even inspired John Lennon’s song Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite! in Sergeant Pepper. And of course, it has not been without controversy, particularly with regard to the treatment of animals; in recent years many countries have passed legislation restricting or banning the use of wild animals in circuses.

Happily, our own interpretation of the circus will be entirely free of animal cruelty! This is jacquielawson.com, so obviously there will be animals! – but ours are mere flickerings of liquid crystal before your eyes, through which we hope to capture the magic of the circus right there on your desktop.

The launch date for the Jacquie Lawson Circus is very soon, and after months of effort we can’t wait to see what you all think!

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!

Feline inspiration

MARCH 2012

Fans who have been with us since the beginning of jacquielawson.com will remember that almost all the early cards described the antics of Jacquie's labrador dog, Chudleigh. Times change and our ecards now embrace a wide range of subjects, but some of our most popular cards are still those featuring dogs and cats.

Maybe part of the reason for this popularity is that almost all the animals we've incorporated into our ecards have been drawn from life, and based on real-life pets belonging to the artists. There's nothing like having a dog chasing leaves in the garden or a kitten climbing up your new curtains to alert you to their idiosyncratic characters, their fluid body movements, and the expressions on their faces.

Some years ago one of our longest-serving artists, Sally Lisney, introduced Bertie the spaniel and Fluff the kitten - not to mention an entire tribe of musical teddy bears - to the jacquielawson.com family. Happily the teddy bears are not based on live pets: but when Sally recently decided (under pressure from her daughter, she assures me) to acquire two new kittens, it was only a matter of time before their digital twins would be seen on our pages.

And sure enough, a new birthday card featuring Figaro and Twink will be out shortly!

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.

Christmas in July

JULY 2011

As many of our fans will remember, the highlight of Christmas 2010 was the launch of a brand new idea: our downloadable animated Advent Calendar. If you didn't get a copy, you missed a real treat - but fear not: our emailbag has been bursting at the seams with requests for a repeat performance, and we've already started working on a brand new Advent Calendar for Christmas 2011. I'm not allowed to give away too many details, but since it's midsummer here now, the snapshot to the left seemed particularly appropriate!

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!

Hark! The Herald Angels sing!

OCTOBER 2010

Our ecards can take weeks or months from concept to completion, and everything has to be planned well in advance, especially our more complex Christmas offerings. So one of the challenges of working for jacquielawson.com is the need to get into a Christmassy mood when everyone else is soaking up the sun!

Back in August we gathered together our little group of "herald angels" - Emma, Gemma, India, Izzie, Marina and Meg - to sing a selection of carols for this Christmas's productions. The neighbours must have thought we were mad!

The photo is a snapshot of our latest Christmas project. We're not revealing too much detail yet, but if you look closely you might guess what we've been up to! All I can say at the moment is that it is easily the most ambitious animation project that we have undertaken, and it'll add a whole new dimension to your and your children's Christmas. We'll give you full details in early November, once we've finished testing it!

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!

Another year, another July 4th card

JUNE 2010

Just looking back over previous entries on this page, I realise that the first entry I made was this time last year, discussing the whys and wherefores of a British ecards site regularly publishing ecards celebrating America's independence!

And here we are again. Another year, another July 4th card. This year's card will once again feature Chudleigh, the chocolate Labrador whose exploits have enlivened many an ecard over the years. The card is being drawn by John Bloom - as the only American on our team he seemed like a good choice for this one! I can't tell you too much more for fear of spoiling the surprise, but the image above will serve as a bit of a tease!

Only five weeks to go!

NOVEMBER 2009

Christmas is of course our busiest time of year and we always try to make some really special cards for the whole of the holiday season. This often means starting work on them while the weather is still warm and the swimming pool beckons, which is an odd time to be thinking about Christmas (unless of course you live in Australia or New Zealand)! This year, our new colleague John Bloom was first off with the holiday cards, and could be seen in August in shorts and a t-shirt, drawing Christmas trees and tinsel...!

John first came to our attention when working for another ecard company which was (rather cheekily, we thought) making cards featuring a Labrador dog which bore an uncanny resemblance to our friends Molly and Chudleigh, and - even more cheekily - was doing it rather well. So we're very excited that John is now on our team, and in the time he's been with us he's produced some fantastic cards. He works closely with Bev (see Proper Painting below), and you'll definitely be able to see her influence in his Christmas card. But I can't tell you any more about it - except we think you'll love it!

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.

Underwater reflections

JULY 2009

Last month's "Behind the Scenes" reminded me that one of the most popular ecards from the early days of jacquielawson.com was From Sea to Shining Sea - the July 4th card featuring underwater scenes which finally make up a collage in the form of the Great Seal of the US. At the time we were a little concerned that people might object to such a great national symbol being made up of seafood - like a sort of patriotic "plat de fruits de mer" - but in the end it turned out to be massively popular, and the card got millions of hits.

We've been working on another "underwater" card recently and you should see it on the website in the next couple of weeks. I'm not allowed to disclose the ending, but it's very atmospheric and I'm sure it'll appeal to children especially. Here's a screenshot as a teaser...

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.