Meridian School Christmas Cards

It's an Olympics Christmas!

2011-11-11T08:13:00.001-08:00

Well ding dong merrily on high, but it's that time again!

Dust off the old fairy lights, find the one that's not working, realise you can't find it, throw the whole string of lights in the bin and go to B&Q to get a new set only to discover that they've sold out and the next container ship of Christmas lights doesn't arrive until January. Or does that normally only happen to me?

Anyway, all Wise Men and Women's thoughts are no doubt turning towards Christmas cards and this post is just to say that Meridian Primary School are once again selling charity Christmas Cards and this year's collection is a right cracker (did you see what I did there?)

Jeremy Banks - pocket cartoonist at the Financial Times and, more importantly, a parent at the school - has produced arguably his finest set of Christmas Cards yet: 6 glorious original cartoons on an Olympic theme.

They're currently off at the printers being printed, so I don't have any colour versions of them yet to put up here on the blog, but there's a black and white poster that shows just four of his designs for this year at the top of this post. Just double click it to open it as a larger image.

Like all the other years we've run this scheme, 100% of all profits go to the school and you can buy the cards with a paypal account or Visa card here on the website. Just go to the top right of this blog and there's a pull down list that allows you to choose the cards you'd like to order.

Anyway, I hope I'm one of the first people to wish you a Happy Christmas - and hope you all had a lovely 2011.

Yours

Meridian Christmas Cards

The final push!

2010-11-28T01:39:00.001-08:00

Hello all

Just a quick update as we now turn the corner and head for the home straight going ho ho ho all the way.

If you're here and wondering whether to buy your Christmas cards from us, can I mention a few final things that might help you make that decision?

The cards are seriously good quality - better even than last year for card thickness, laminosity (not a real word) and envelopicity (that is a real word).

The cards are designed by the Financial Times pocket cartoonist (a parent at the school) and they are very, very funny.

100% of all profits goes to help Meridian Primary School in Greenwich. This is a fabulous local community school - and in these straightened times of funding cuts they appreciate (and need) every penny that the Friends of Meridian School can raise.

To be clear: We are selling each pack of 6 cards + envelopes for only £3 per pack. Our printing costs are £1 per pack, so it means that £2 from every sale goes straight to the Friends of Meridian School.

If you live within the SE10 postcode we'll also deliver the cards to you for free!

Taken from the press release for this year's cards:

Last year’s collection raised over £2,500 in profits for the school, which went towards developing a nature garden, pond and vegetable patches, which the children have put to good use growing their own! This year, the money will be put towards a computer fund to buy 32 specially adapted laptops.

If you'd like to order the cards, you can do so from the pull down menu on the right of this blog.

And finally... HAPPY CHRISTMAS.

The new Xmas designs for 2010!

2010-10-10T05:11:00.000-07:00

Welcome all to the Meridian Christmas Card Blog for 2o1o. Ho ho ho.

Honestly, it just doesn't get bigger than this. Put's this in the shade, anyway.

So, without further ado, take a gander at this year's brilliant designs:

They're wilfully low res, but the finished articles will of course be as beautifully high quality as last year's offering.

So here's to Christmas 2010..... and let Meridian Primary School be the first to wish you a very merry Christmas.

Drumroll please!

2010-10-04T14:13:00.000-07:00

Yes yes yes, the wait will soon be over.... more Meridian Christmas Cards for 2010 are currently being designed and will once again be sold / promoted on this website.

Oh Brave New World!

Merry Christmas

2009-12-04T03:53:00.001-08:00

Well, what an amazing experiment! I'm sorry to say, if you came to this site hoping to buy Meridian Christmas Cards, they're SOLD OUT. And this is after a second print run as well... which means that between this site and all of the hard work of FROMS (Friends of Meridian School), 700 sets of six cards have been shifted.

Even by my maths, that makes 4,200 individual Christmas Cards sold - which is an awesome amount really, when you think about it.

This site alone has raised enough money through Paypal that, even when knocking off the (pernicious) cut that Paypal demand, I've still got .... [goes to Paypal and discovers that they've frozen my account because they think I'm money laundering and now I've got to wait until I get something in the post before I'm allowed to access my account again. All very noble of course, but a bit bloody irritating. Anyway - ] I've still got at least £900 in my Payal account, so that's how much this website alone has raised.

Actually, they're now letting me look at the account, so I'll take a screen grab of it and put it at the top of the post.

(Once all of the cash has been counted, I'll post an official amount of money raised... so do watch this space. But it's going to be in the region of £1,500+ of profit, which is a stunningly large amount of money).

So thank you all of you who bought cards - and drop me a line if you'd like to be added to our list of people to contact when we produce our cards for Xmas 2010!

Phantom Power!

2009-10-22T11:34:00.001-07:00

Well, that's amazing! Within 6 hours or so of the Phantom posting on her website and we've had well over £100 of extra orders. God Bless You, Phantom! (And if you don't assiduously follow The Greenwich Phantom already, then SHAME ON YOU).

As a quick aside, if you're buying these cards via paypal, then do please look at the (nasty) pull down menu above the ADD TO CART Button. It's here that you can pay based on whether you'll need to add postage or not. As a rough guide, we/I live next door to Maze Hill Train station and I'll essentially be delivering on foot.... and I don't like hills too much.... :-)

But thank you all who've ordered so far, we are stunned by the response!

The 6 Christmas Cards

2009-10-19T12:29:00.001-07:00

Here, then, for anyone who'd like to see, are the six different designs for the Meridian Christmas Cards, 2009.

(Double click the image to see an even higher resolution image of the 6 cards. I've added a 'PROOF' watermark to the images as they're almost - but not quite - high enough quality for printing.)

To recap:

Each pack you buy contains 6 cards each with a different design on - and the pack of 6 cards costs £3. Of that £3, ALL profits go to Meridian Primary School (once printing costs are covered).

The cards are printed on proper card paper and are of standard (A6) Christmas Card Size - and printed on a professional press - and also, of course, come with 6 envelopes.

And it should be said that although we've only just taken delivery of the finished product, they are of simply excellent quality from start to finish.

However, the most important thing to note is that the cartoons themselves are FANTASTIC and we hope you agree.

I've put the basic designs into a single graphic and put grey borders around each picture. I've kept the resolution relatively low, but it should be good enough to look at on the screen.

So here they are, the six differently wonderful cartoons that Banx did to support Meridian Primary School. Buy them and not only will you be supporting a local Primary School, but you'll also be the proud owner of 6 cards all of which are entirely bespoke to Greenwich - our Borough and proud of it!

The thorny issue of postage costs

2009-10-19T12:21:00.000-07:00

Hello

There I was being all smug, but it turns out the Paypal-ness of this whole endeavour is a little more complicated than I thought. What I hadn't realised was:

Most people who'll want to buy these cards live locally and therefore there is no need for the Paypal link to have Postage Costs automatically attached to each sale (how boring is this?). Clearly, I've been able to drop off most orders by foot and therefore people need only pay at precisely £3 per pack of 6 cards. And yet....

Some other people might need Postage costs to be added to their order as we don't just want to limit our sales to the SE10 area. Therefore, maybe there should nonetheless be an option to pay for postage? To this end - and rather inelegantly, I'm afraid - I've implemented a nasty little pull down menu you first have to navigate before you can go to the Paypal Checkout area. Essentially, the two options you're choosing from are:

a) You live locally and if you tell us your address we can drop off the cards by foot - or you can arrange to collect from us, whatever's most convenient. (We live in SE10).

b) You don't live locally and therefore you're happy to pay £3.30 per pack because the extra 30p per pack will cover postage.

(I imagine that 30p per pack won't quite cover postage, but I'm happy to take a tiny hit on what is after all a charity endeavour).

I hope this all makes sense now.

Friends of Meridian School

2009-10-08T03:15:00.000-07:00

Another thought: just to show that the Friends of Meridian School is a bona fide charity, here's a link to their web presence on a Charities Website.

Season's Greetings

2009-10-08T03:11:00.000-07:00

Just occurred to me, I ought to post what the insides of the card look like. It's just plain and blank apart from the message, 'Season's Greetings' - and thanks to the wonders of the Web, here is the exact graphic:

Banx!

2009-10-08T02:56:00.001-07:00

For those who are interested, there's some blurb on the back of the cards that explains who Banx is. As it's pretty impressive, I thought I'd cut and paste it here:

Banx has been a professional cartoonist for the last 28 years. His cartoons and strips have appeared all over the world. He has been published in Punch, Private Eye, SHE, The Mail on Sunday, The New Statesman and the Daily Express.

He has been the Financial Times’ daily cartoonist for the last twenty years. In 2008 he was winner of the Cartoon Art Trust pocket cartoonist of the year award.
He lives in Greenwich with his family and has two daughters attending Meridian Primary School.

Visit his website at www.banxcartoons.co.uk

Who am I and why am I here?

2009-10-02T12:20:00.000-07:00

(pretty psyched at adding a Paypal button, so without further ado, some blurb about what this is all about).

Hello, my name is Robert, this is the blurb:

Meridian Primary School is an excellent community school in the glorious Borough of Greenwich, London. Greenwich is of course one of the greatest spots in the world (it is a World Heritage Site) and, as a parent of two children who go to Meridian, it is perhaps unsurprising that I also think that Meridian is one of the best schools in the Borough.

Anyway, I'm sure I don't need to go into details. If you're reading these words, there's every chance that you already know and love Greenwich well. Otherwise... WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?

As for the idea behind the Charity Cards - well, it was my wife who realised that 'Banx' - not his real name, it goes without saying - but, nonetheless, a very succesful professional cartoonist, was also a parent at the school. So, she got together with him and with FROMS (the Friends of Meridian School) and together they came up with a genius idea:

Why don't we ask Banx to make some bespoke Christmas Cards that celebrate Greenwich?

He's a professional - he'll do a good job..... won't he? (The answer to this is 'YES YES YES, HE DID AN AMAZING JOB') and then we can maybe get a local printers to print the cards and then we can sell them on behalf of Meridian School, making sure that 100% of all profit we make from the sale of these cards goes to the Friends of Meridian School.

That's why I find myself writing this blurb - or rather it is and it isn't. You see, Banx didn't just do a good job. He did a BRILLIANT job - and we were all blown away by the quality of his work. Clearly, he loves Greenwich, cares passionately about it and all of this love and passion is demonstrably evident in his 6 fantastic Christmas Cards that he's drawn for us.

And then we come to the printers, MWM LITHO - a local company from around the corner. Stuart's been our contact at MWM and, because of his support, the company are essentially printing all of the cards at cost price so that we can raise as much money as possible for the school.

In fact, Stuart has been incredibly helpful from start to finish - ringing to keep me posted on how the printing is going and helping me over the various logistical hurdles of turning our pictures into foldable cards. He has been fabulously professional and courteous, the cards he's produced are awesome and I can't recommend MWM Litho highly enough, frankly.

And so that's where I come in. I am only tangentially involved with all of this, but I have been so impressed with everyone else's work on the cards that I thought.... 'well maybe there's a way of selling these amazing cards online...?'

Reader, there is! You're here already - and if you'd like to buy any of the packs of 6 cards, then do please click on the ADD TO CART button (on the top right hand side of this blog) as that will then take you to a page where you can give me money and I will sell you the cards.

Ah. I see an error in my thinking now for the first time. How can I prove that although you're paying ME money, ALL of that money is going to the Friends of Meridian School...? I wonder if this is an issue. Let me have a think and I'll get back to you.

Selling Christmas Cards online!

2009-10-02T12:11:00.001-07:00

Well, that's an amazing achievement. It turns out that with absolutely no coding knowledge whatsoever, it's been possible to add a button on the side of this blog that says ADD TO CART.... and which will allow anyone in the world to buy our Charity Christmas Cards and enter their card details / address / etc. so that we can then send the cards out to them.

This is a stunningly impressive thing to be able to do - considering that it's cost me zero pence so far (either for the blogger feed or for the Paypal invoice page-y thing) - however, there is a mild downside. I presume that Paypal will take a tiny cut from each pack of 6 christmas cards sold.

This is rather frustrating, but seeing as I seem to have created a Meridian Charity Christmas Card Shop for free, I suppose it's no more than a mild frustration. Anyway, I'll go and see if I can find out how much Paypal will fleece our Primary School for the privelege of processing any payments. Shall report back if I can....

(This is all very exciting. I wonder if we'll even sell 1 set of cards through this site?)

2009-10-02T11:40:00.000-07:00

This is a test post, as it's not entirely clear whether or not this is going to be an effective way of having a Meridian School Chritmas Card web presence. Ugly sentence. Anyway, I wonder if I can now post pictures or, as I really really hope, add some kind of a paypal button so that people can place orders. Or, of course, there's always the chance of selling through Ebay..... here goes nothing.