By Ethan Walshe
Editor-in-Chief
Everyone loves a greeting card. Be it for birthdays, Christmas, Mother’s day, you name it, cards can capture emotions and put a smile on someone’s face. Such is the goal of Westford Academy English teacher Kyle Kucaj, whose homemade card making business Clipped Greetings has been gaining a steady flow of business in the past few years.
Kucaj began making greeting cards several years ago as a means of self expression. She has always been interested in the arts, enjoying manipulating different mediums with her hands.
“Sometimes I focus too much when I’m drawing on make it look like a photograph and it loses its personality. So I like with cards that I’m not allowed to be restricted and I kind of have to be more fun,” said Kucaj
One of the staples of Kucaj’s work is her use of recycled materials to produce cards. A typical piece of her work can showcase any number of materials from cut outs of vintage art books, to old advertisements, to even old Far Side cartoons.
Each card features some kind of phrase, a birthday greeting, holiday message or amusing anecdote overlaying the images.
“My favorite part is when I use vintage art books, usually from the impressionist era … or old advertising images of people and I come up with funny captions,” said Kucaj. “If someone looks very serious and it’s a very serious portrait I’ll put ‘this is my game face’ on the bottom, something funny, something relevant and I laugh out loud to myself.”
What Kucaj particularly enjoys about this method of making cards is that each card is unique because of the ever changing variety of materials. She only makes one. After the card is sold, it is gone forever. Occasionally, a customer will contact her asking if she can make a card again and she will tell them that she can try, but it will never be exactly the same because she won’t have all the same materials.
“If there’s a card that sells really well, then I’ll try and get the same materials but I’ll never photocopy it … I really want them to be unique. I don’t want it to look like you’re buying a pack that’s been made in a factory somewhere halfway across the world,” said Kucaj.
Although the artistic component of card making is certainly a focus, there is a business aspect as well. Every time Kucaj makes a new card, it is scanned and catalogued on her website. The logistics of actually running the business can detract from some art value, according to Kucaj, but it is necessary.
On the business note, Kucaj has seen her production grow in the past few years. She just made her 5000th original card this past month and has seen her sales rise to around 700-800 annually. The Holiday Bazaar has been a big help in selling the cards because people come back each year looking for her wares.
Kucaj does not actively advertise her cards; most of her sales are to friends or spread via word of mouth. In fact, a large number of cards get sold by her parents.
“My dad drives around and has a supply of my cards on him at all times and he has people in the coffee shop that he sees in the morning, people at work that will come to him and say ‘I need a birthday card, what do you have?'” said Kucaj.
As some may know, Kucaj is four months pregnant with her first child. She says that she hopes to continue making cards after the baby comes, but her time will obviously be limited.
In the past she has taken on bigger orders. In fact, principal Jim Antonelli ordered some themed cards for Westford Academy, which was a large undertaking.
From just for fun creativity to actual business, Clipped Greetings has crafted its way to success, and Kucaj is enjoying herself along the way.
“I love this. If people weren’t buying my cards I’d probably just have bins and bins of handmade greeting cards in the basement,” said Kucaj.
