Would this really be the best first (other) place to put the following? No choice but to scour until these cursed little bitches are back where they belong and the universe is semi-okay again. Dammit all to fuck.
Bumping this thread because it's the only thing I've found so far that's anywhere close to what I'm desperately looking for...and my noble quest shan't end until its mission statement is fulfilled. My family has been keeping a precious cabinet of exchanged greeting cards since my early childhood (born '87.) I've always taken pride in our ability to select the perfect card for each recipient and personalize them to boot. Just recently I was devastated to realize that three of the all-time best ones have somehow simply vanished into thin air. This was never supposed to be possible and cannot happen. Knowing that I absolutely must find them somehow, I immediately contacted Hallmark and American Greetings--praying that there'd be card designers from the 90s/00s who might be able to remember and identify certain ones, or artists with portfolios containing them, or an archive of past years' designs. Willing to pay for the time of the person who can help if it takes a bit to hunt for them. I've never had to put much thought into this before...have I hit on the one thing too weird to actually exist? Are there people who could be considered greeting-card enthusiasts, fans, admirers, collectors, experts? That everybody regards them as purely disposable ephemera when some are true works of art, and that the companies don't keep a database of the past decades' designs, is striking me as tragic.
Anyway. Best describe the bloody cards if there's to be any chance, eh...and hope I don't think of any more missing ones.
1) Christmas card, multistory Victorian-type house on cover with glittery snowfall. Interior visible through cutout windows. Folds open to reveal full rooms, then again to the greeting page. Could add further detail if that's been done more than once, but it'd be instantly recognizable. Really great artwork that I've always loved a lot. It's one of our unique, special, beautiful, happifying, dearly beloved ones and I *will* find it, or at the very least the exact image. *,-,*
2) Accordion-folding white card addressed to a mom (could be Mother's Day or a mom's birthday.) Poem about animal moms with cartoon illustrations. Innermost spread features pop-up clam (final line is "I'm just as happy as a clam to have a mom like you" or something.) Ex. "penguin mothers always dress their little ones real cool," fish mothers sending theirs to school, a pink+purple Poodle scolding "Who said you were old enough to shave your legs, young lady?" (I doodled that last one once.) And suchlike.
3) Another accordion-style funny poem with cartoons. Periwinkle/powder blue sort of color I think, maybe just light blue. From mom to dad, so probably anniversary. Pair of anthropomorphic white bunnies and their various funny marital escapades and issues and whatnot...ends with them kissing. Best picture is them watching TV in bed. Illustrations are puffy.
Hope those grandparents' collection got scanned; I'm sure it's lovely. ;; I could never consider getting rid of anything like that without at least taking a picture or recording a flip-through. And I'll never be able to understand people who don't get deeply attached to things. For roughly the past decade I've maintained a "Missing List" of priceless stuff that, despite my extreme sense of organization and neatness, has defied all known laws of physics to disappear on me just like the cards (but it's already a proven fact that the universe exists purely to torture me, as I witness absolutely-impossible-and-impossibly-infuriating occurrences on a regular basis.) The knowledge that absolutely anything at all, and extremely beloved things in particular, can literally dematerialize at any moment tempts me to just give up on everything. What's the point? Fiercely stubborn defiance of the universe's many savagely cruel, deliberate, constant, trolling tactics is what prevents total apathy. I started a couple of infinite documents for writing everything I remember, and as muuuch incredible awesomeness as I've kept since childhood, every day I think about how I'd do anything to have it *all* back, and to loop endlessly from 1987 through some point a while ago. And just have a big she-shed/Sheseum/Fortress of Infinitude/holy sacred blessed pilgrimage site. To go back and ensure that I'm taking clearly necessary photos/video of absolutely everything, including the interiors of all the places that never should've gone out of business or now look totally different...to be able to walk through them only in memory, and to probably inadequately describe them since a picture's worth a thousand words...I find it almost unbearably sad and frustrating. Being unable to find any images of or info about something or someplace--same. It just really gets me; I can't take anything good becoming only a memory.
In some cases it kinda makes sense if the thing's pretty old and obscure and lacks a specific name or brand or anything to go on, no matter how specific my description/search terms. When it seems as if you ought to have been able to locate it somewhere somehow, that's beyond lousy and baffling. Just utterly unbelievable sometimes. Real wanna-shoot-yourself levels of impossibility. }8~@ (E.g. a recent one--Artgame gonna tell me they can't identify the Royce McClure coral reef image wrapped around a large plastic tumbler cup (c) 2009 Motion Imaging Inc./IGH Solutions 6805/Technimark/anything else written on the other cup I've got here, that I'm describing? Honestly? *rages*) There oughta be a "Anybody out there maybe remember/have an image of these zillion-jillion amazing-yet-unfindable things?" site. Success is naturally joyous, and can also remind you of something else, and something else, and easily lead you down a rabbit hole of overwhelming nostalgia-wallowing. Which tbf has felt like my default state for some time. This has turned into a long diary entry or something, but whatever--the important bit is the card stuff.
