Welcome! I'm Amanda, the autistic artist and writer of Ripples Greeting Cards.
As a child, my family moved to different states several times. The people I loved were so far away, and greeting cards helped bridge that geographic distance. Before the age of internet, a significant segment of my social life came from a mailbox. Today, during the covid-19 pandemic, printed cards are still a relevant way to express our feelings of joy, grief, gratitude or love. Everything changes; life is a series of randomly interspersed moments with treasured people. While we have them with us, we can let them know they're cherished. My craft is my little contribution, in gratitude for the work of greeting card artists and writers before me who made my life a little brighter.
Ripples Greeting Cards began as a hobby on April 30th, 2014 with "Tea with Peter Rabbit," now retired after 7 years hopping all over the place, including sailing with the US Coast Guard, and on fireplace mantels, businesses, and bookshelves around the country.
Greeting cards are often made using methods that pollute the planet and harm laborers in order to give you the cheapest prices. That's why Ripples Greeting Cards are sustainably and ethically made in the USA by SmartPress, and sleeved in compostable material. Specific details can be found on each design's page in our shop.
Cards for Conservation
Every penny of profit from card sales helps offset the cost of Ripples conservation projects such as the purchase of native plants that host wildlife, and trail cameras that monitor destructive human activity in conservation areas. Ripples is a personal project anyone can do in their own unique way! The goal is to live our lives in a way that helps both people and planet.
Ripples Greeting Cards are drawn by hand in an off-grid tiny house at the property where my husband Ryan and I work as stewards. Our electricity comes from solar, our water comes from the rain collected on our roof and stored in our cistern with a native plant greywater garden, and we use a composting toilet. Ripples website and the Ripples Greeting Cards online shop (where you're reading right now!) are both solar-hosted with AISO.
Thank you for supporting us with your purchase of a greeting card or print!
Art Process
Every design begins in my imagination, with concept "thumbnail" sketches. After the final sketch is worked out on white paper in graphite pencil, it's transferred to a sheet of drafting film (Grafix Dura-Lar double-sided matte .005). Color is added to both the front and back sides of the sheet, using mostly Prismacolor Premier and Faber-Castell Polychromos colored pencils and Pan pastels. The original artwork is scanned to create a digital file. I use the open-source editing program GIMP only when necessary, since I'm a bit of a luddite. I encourage customer feedback and edit my artwork several times. Each design takes approximately 60 hours over a couple of months. Finally, the design is sent to our printer, SmartPress, a socially responsible, employee-owned Minnesota-based company with an impressive environmental track record, including "carbon neutral printing."