Friends of Meridian School

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

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!

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?

(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!

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?)

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.