2012 Xmas Cards sold out!

Well, thank you all for your wonderful support this year - whether you bought cards, designed them (thank you, Banx), printed them, wrapped them, publicised them, distributed them, etc. etc. etc. - and this is just a little postlet to say....

....we're sold out!

Or, rather, we've sold out of the Paralympic Xmas cards. We still have Xmas cards we can sell you from last year (a brilliant set of Olympics cards - do please see further down on this blog), so if you'd still like to support the school and buy some cards, you're welcome to do so... but they'll be from last year's stock.

Anyway, thank you one and all for making this such a successful venture - and we wish you a very, VERY merry Christmas.

Christmas Cards 2012

Welcome to Meridian Primary School's 2012 Paralympic Christmas cards, in association with Banx, pocket cartoonist of the Financial Times. 

Here's how to buy them: you can pay with a Paypal account or Visa card here. 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. 

100% of all profits go to our school...and they have the backing of one of our greatest Paralympians of all time - 2 x gold medal winner and World Record holder, Paralympic swimmer, Ellie Simmonds!

They're currently being prepared at the printers, which means the full colour versions are not yet available, but here you can see the black and white, before we add the final touches of red and green. As before, click on the image to enlarge. You get the idea...

And finally, if you're here because you're a big fan of Banx's work, don't forget he has his very own website where you can buy originals of his art work.

http://banxcartoons.co.uk

Merry Christmas!

It's an Olympics Christmas!

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!

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.

x

The new Xmas designs for 2010!

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!

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

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!

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

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

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.