Fairy tales on greeting cards

I was recently lucky enough to stumble on a greeting card display that was dedicated to Tree Free's "mystical fantasy" series of greeting cards. I hope some of you have seen these too: the art is enchanting and the cards are blank - no trite messages scrawled inside. I had never thought to look for greeting cards as a medium for fairy tales, but take a look!

The image to the left is "Dreamkeeper" by Sheila Wolk, which startled me when I saw it on the shelf, for I had never seen a baby mermaid before, or even thought that such a thing might be. Yet how else do you populate an ocean with merpeople? And it is a very beautiful baby.

Or look at Maxine Gadd's "Pot O' Gold" with its unusually charming leprechaun; most of the artists whose work appears on the Tree Free cards provide surprising and wonderful work. Browsing these cards inspired me to start searching the Net for other greeting cards that depict or transform fairy tales.



I've found Francis Tyrell's site (www.francestyrrell.com), where the images have a storybook charm - here, for instance, are "Wynken, Blynken, and Nod" and "The Princess and the Pea" -

Help me find more of these - post comments to tell where you have run into or know of other greeting cards that work through fairy tale or mythic images. I have a habit of buying greeting cards that I like and then never sending them; they sit propped open on my bookshelves as little reminders of wonder.