It is Valentine's Day today, and here in England every shop window is full of hearts and "retail" guidance on how to display our affection towards our sweethearts. Strangely, in Finland, 14th of February is not so much a lover's day but a day to remember our friends. We don't even call it Valentine's Day but A Friendship Day (Ystävänpäivä). Maybe it is the reserved, introverted nature of Finns, (also mentioned in the Guardian article by Michael Booth, who seems to make his living by writing not so nice articles about us Scandinavians) that has made it easier and less exposing for us to celebrate friends as well as lovers.
Anyway, I have been crafting hand-made cards for some time now, and I sell them in few shops around England. The cards feature an illustration of a boy or a girl. They have hand-printed cheeks and eye shadows, hand-drawn hair and face, and clothes cut from patterned paper. Each of the cards is unique with different colours and styles of hair and clothes. One of the shops, that sells my cards, Appendage in Brighton, asked me to make a special edition version of the cards for Valentine's Day, see above. The original cards, see below.
