News

Like many publishers, we have wanted to move towards more sustainable packaging for our cards for a long time. We introduced our 100% recycled Kraft envelopes a few years ago, but wanted to improve our sustainability around cello bag use. We looked at all sorts of solutions like stickers, clasps, paper bands and folded paper corners, but none of them were quite right for us. We thought a lot about ‘going naked’, selling our cards unwrapped. This to us would be the most appealing option, but many of the customers we have discussed this with have had understandable reservations. Their concern...

In the last few months we have all been finding ways to stay mentally and physically healthy while adjusting to the pandemic. Like so many of you, we have been turning to the natural world and to the world of art. Both are well known to have a positive impact on our mental health. A walk in a local park or woods, or a cup of tea in the garden can help give us some space to breathe, reflect and recharge in times of a crisis. We humans have always been using creative activities such as painting, music, literature, dance etc, to process what is happening...

If you would like to send a card to a friend or loved one but are unable to get out, you can now leave it to us! Add your chosen card to the basket and write your personal greeting in the 'Add a note to your order' box underneath the image. Please ensure the greeting is short enough to easily fit on a card. We will then handwrite your message and send the card to the recipient by first class post. We aim to post the card within two days of receiving the order. Please put the recipient's name and address in the Shipping address section....

Suddenly it is here - a new year, a new decade! This is our busiest and also our favourite time of year. It is when we launch our new collection and get ready for Top Drawer London Spring. If you are visiting the show, please come and say hello, see what's new and have a cheeky chocolate. Our stand number is ZB49. It will be our 10th time of exhibiting there - time flies when you're having fun!  Over the past 10 years this small business, which Laura started from her home while also raising two wonderful babies, has been growing steadily (much...

Since we began publishing Louise Rawlings' work, it has become a firm favourite with our customers. After the success with 'Bruce' in 2018, we were excited to add the charming and hilarious new Christmas pack 'The Splendid Pudding' this year. We are pleased to say it has been very well received, it is clear that we are not the only ones who adore this wonderful Christmas card!  Louise lives and works in Sutton Coldfield. Most of her ideas originate during her early morning dog walk. She takes her inspiration from the changing seasons and everyday observations of the people and dogs she meets...

Since we introduced Carla Vize-Martin's card range last year it has become a favourite with our customers. One of the best selling cards in the range is A Day to Remember. We love this beautiful landscape with rolling hills and wildflowers, painted in acrylic on board and we thought it would be a perfect featured card for November when Remembrance Day marks the end of World War One. The painting was inspired by Carla's long walks with the family's Irish Terrier, Fergus.  "We live in a small village in the heart of Hampshire, surrounded by rolling hills and wild flower hedgerows....

We first discovered Lisa Graa Jensen RI at the Royal Institute for Painters in Watercolour annual show at the Mall Galleries in London in 2015. We were at the exhibition to choose a painting and to offer the Dry Red Press Award to the artist. When we came across Hide and Seek we knew straight away that we had found our winner. To our delight Lisa accepted the award and that was the beginning of our collaboration. After the success of Hide and Seek, we introduced a whole range of her work and it has been extremely popular, with new designs added each year. We don't...

The first time we saw Lesley McLaren's painting Ruffled Wren we both instantly fell in love with this beautiful little bird. Those ruffled feathers and the cocked little tail are just adorable. Overall the image is a bit darker than most of our greeting cards but the light feathers and the silver birch really stand out against the background and the contrast makes it really come alive. We are not surprised that this card has been one of our top 5 selling cards since it was introduced in January 2016. It is one of our most ordered designs by the RSPB and...

One of our most loved Dry Red Press artists is the wonderful Ian Bliss who sadly passed away earlier this year. Ian was a lovely person to work with, a devoted family man and a talented artist. As one of the first artists we published, Ian's popular greeting card range forms part of the 'core' of Dry Red Press. 'Look, no Hands' has for many years been one of our best selling cards.  Born in 1930, Ian studied at the Repton and Leicester College of Art from 1950 to 1955. Elected as a Member of the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolours...

Ringo and Pansies by Anne-Marie Butlin has become our most popular cat card since it was introduced in January. Our customers find him irresistible despite his serious look! We feel very lucky to have Ringo in our collection along with the rest of Anne-Marie's beautiful images. Her oil paintings reproduce beautifully as cards and are suited to many occasions making her range one of our most successful. Ringo and Pansies by Anne-Marie Butlin Anne-Marie Butlin trained at Harrow and Loughborough College of Art. She currently lives in Crouch End, North London and paints full time from her garden studio. 'All my...

We have been looking for a funny, storytelling card range for a while and a few months ago we came across a lovely artist named Jenni Murphy. After seeing her wonderful, contemporary, hilarious artwork we contacted her to ask if she might be interested in collaborating with us. As you can imagine, we were really pleased when she said yes! Girls' Holiday, by Jenni Murphy, acrylic on panel Jenni was born in London as one of seven children. Her early years were spent enjoying the free things in this world. Camping trips in leaky tents, foraging for mushrooms in the woods,...

If you know Sue Campion you will know the Shropshire landscape – even if you have never had the pleasure of visiting. A Group of Shropshires is a typical Campion pastel of the Shropshire hills surrounding her home. This is one of our most recent introductions to Sue's much loved range of cards and it is hugely popular with our customers. The original painting which is 20 x 24 inches took Sue around three days to finish and sold soon after at The Russell Gallery in Putney where similar paintings are available. The rolling, early summer landscape with its blossom...

What would be better suited for the month of May than Spring at Last? This beautiful card from the original painting by artist Anna Perlin was introduced in January and immediately became one of our best sellers. The beautiful texture of Anna's mixed media art stands out even when the image has been printed onto a card. The calm greens and hopeful, life-affirming pinks of the blossom will send a message of hope, life, inspiration and new beginnings to the lucky receiver.  Spring at Last by Anna Perlin Anna Perlin grew up in the Oxfordshire countryside and her love for...

We celebrate this day each year to show our gratitude and appreciation for everything our mothers do for us. A mother’s role is arguably the most challenging there is. Once you become a mother, your whole life changes. To be a mother is to be selfless, to love unconditionally, to nurture, to encourage, to support, to guide, to teach, to comfort and to forgive. And alongside the never ending daily practical work undertaken by mothers (a list too long and dull to bore you with), they are also the emotional backbone of the family, providing a place for everyone’s feelings....

Following our busiest month ever here are Dry Red Press we would like to share our excitement about our 2019 collection. We had a fantastic response to the new introductions at Top Drawer this year and would like to thank everyone who visited our stand and gave us such positive feedback. We have worked hard to keep our collection fresh and diverse, taking away slower sellers in order to make way for new designs and new ranges. This means we can guarantee that every design in our catalogue is potentially a great seller for our customers. We have introduced three...

There is nothing more important when running a business than to have a good relationship with your customers. We are really pleased to be supplying so many independent shops as it generally makes for a more personal contact. It may be the industry we are in, but we really do have the nicest customers and it is such a pleasure working with them all. We would like to introduce you to some of them in this blog post and share the lovely things they have said about Dry Red Press. Michael and Sarah Fram, The Leaping Hare Gallery and Framers The...

It is always really exciting to launch a new card collection. After last year’s successful catalogue with popular new ranges such as Anna Perlin, Daniel Cole, Kate Green, Little Ram Studio and the NEAC art society range, we knew it would be a difficult act to follow. We are pleased to say that the new introductions for 2018 have been fantastically well received, and alongside our many established ranges we feel this year’s collection may be our strongest yet. We hope you will enjoy reading about our talented new 2018 artists.   Louise Rawlings Louise Rawlings graduated in the early nineties with...

Earlier this year we came across Artspace Brighton, a small, Brighton based charity founded in 2013 by Abi Jones and Kit Man. When we learned about their work, assisting recovery by providing an art studio for adults with experience of mental health issues, we wanted to do something to support them. With the ongoing cuts in mental health care - as well as in arts funding - Artspace is providing a much needed service to its members.    Abi Jones and Kit Man, founders of Artspace Studio We booked in a meeting to learn more about the charity and to find out what kind of...

We are very pleased to announce that on 1st June we are introducing a new art society range and three new artist ranges to our current greeting card collection. Together with the new images by existing artists we are launching 58 new designs for you to enjoy. You can view all the new cards here. NEW ENGLISH ART CLUB (NEAC) We have been presenting the Dry Red Press Award at the New English Art Club’s annual exhibition since 2014. We are now very pleased to publish this beautiful new range of 11 fine art greeting cards, using images donated by the...

Planning next year’s card collection and catalogue is one of our most important tasks as art greeting card publishers. This year it was a bigger undertaking than ever as we wanted to introduce quite a large number of new images. In fact, we will be launching over 100 new designs at Top Drawer in January 2017! 'Couple' by Debra Sweeney We got organised early in the year, deciding on deadlines for each stage long before we got started. We use the brilliant project management app Asana, which is completely free and enables us to keep on top of all our projects, tasks...

Did you know that we support 4 major British art societies through the sale of our cards? The artists and their work have always been at the heart of Dry Red Press. As publishers of art greeting cards we are proud to be working with such well established artists as well as being committed to introducing young and emerging artists’ work to our growing collection. Members of each society send us a selection of their images and we have the wonderful job of looking through all the impressive works of art and selecting those that we feel will make popular...

We are excited to introduce this stunning new image to our collection. 'The Ins and Outs', an etching by Corinna Button, won the Dry Red Press award at a recent exhibition at the Bankside Gallery in London. Exhibiting were members of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers (RE) with whom we are already associated - see our existing range of cards by members of the society here. We are delighted with the card which will go into our Prize Winners range. All royalties from the sale of this card will go to the artist. To view or purchase this new card click...

There is nothing quite like receiving a hand written card in the post. The excitement when you open the envelope, the artwork or design on the front and then the words inside, written especially for you. It is such a simple thing to do, a greeting card costs little and doesn’t take that long to write - unless you want it to. Yet it can make such a difference to the person receiving it. According to the Greeting Card Association, 878.8 million single cards were sold in the UK in 2014. Will we reach a billion this year? If my...

We were delighted to attend the Critics' Lunch at the Mall Galleries where we offered the Dry Red Press award to one of the many talented NEAC artists exhibiting there. We chose this beautiful oil painting titled 'Summer Flowers' by Diana Calvert NEAC. We will publish this image as a greeting card which will become part of our Prize Winners' range. Artist Statement  Diana Calvert is a painter of landscapes, still life and flowers. She often has more than one painting on the go at any one time, building each up from washes. Composition is extremely important to her, finding...

Last year we were contacted by Tom Homewood, an established artist, living and working locally to us in Sussex. Tom had been looking for a greeting card publisher to represent his work and mentioned this to the printer he uses. It so happens that we share the same printer! So the lovely people at One Digital, also local to us, recommended Dry Red Press as a publisher for Tom. After looking through his diverse collection of paintings we felt sure we could produce a very popular range of greeting cards. When choosing a new artist we try to make sure...

When we were first approached by Paul's agent about publishing a range of football art cards we thought 'What? Football cards! How could they work for us and how would we ever sell them!' We have since learnt about Paul Trevillion's 60 year long career as a sports artist and we soon decided this was well worth a go. Not only is Paul an extremely talented artist, he is rather famous within the world of sport and he has an interesting and impressive history.  In the 1960's Paul became well known for his comic art realism in Roy of the Rovers and...

When we decided to go for it with a buy online website for our art greeting cards, we were fortunate enough to already have a brilliant web designer. David Hampton already knew our brand and had designed our previous websites so we didn’t have to start from the beginning. We thought about what we wanted from the new website and came up with a few basics.     A clean, fresh, minimalist look to go with our brand    Be able to manage it ourselves with our painfully limited tech knowledge    Secure payment gateway    Easy to navigate for...

We have just launched the new website with our 2016 greeting card range available to buy online...

The Business Design Centre
London
Stand number 340

www.progressivegreetingslive.com