At Visual Arts Center..

The Holiday Open House at Visual Arts Center was a good experience. We had an opportunity to display & sell our cards along with other artists selling art in various media like glass, prints, ceramics & fiber-arts. Our cards & mission were well appreciated by all who came & many of them bought their holiday cards from us. We even had folks who appreciated not just the art on our cards, but also the quotes on some of our cards - especially the quotes on our "Kites" series of cards that had been suggested by 13-year-old Vibha ! Way to go Vibha - you have inspired so many interpretations to those "Kites" :-)

We are at The Visual Ats Center on December 11th

The Visual Arts Center located on West Main Street is hosting a holiday open house on Saturday, 11 December from 12:30 to 4:00 p.m. We are displaying and selling cards at this event. We encourage you to come visit us at this gallery for your Christmas shopping. You will find several other vendors and refreshments, complimentary by The Visual Arts Center. And oh yes it is a free event !

Check out our cards for this HOLIDAY Season...

Celebrate these holidays with peace, love, and warmth of family & friends. Check out our cards for holiday wishes for your loved ones. Blank inside so that you can write the message with your special thoughts for the recipients. Here are some samples:

• May the holiday season bring Love, Joy & Blessings for you and your family!
• May the lights of Hannukah bring Peace & Harmony for you, family & friends!
• Let this Holiday Season bring blessings of...
  The strength and serenity of the mountains,
  The power and depth of the oceans, and,
  The beauty and innocence of an opening blossom.
• Let us welcome and enjoy every moment as the New Year unfolds its many promises and new beginnings !
• Wish you and all your loved ones a very very joyous, loving and exciting new year!!

These cards come with matching envelopes and you can choose any four of these five... If you order 2 sets, you get one card extra!

An e-mail from Doctors without Borders !!

I just finished reading the e-mail from Charlie Kunzer-our contact person at Doctors Without Borders. Our fundraiser donation check of $551.00 was received and here is what Charlie has to say in response:

"Your fundraiser contributed $551.00 and will help us to respond immediately
to emergencies as they arise by providing urgently needed medical care and
humanitarian aid to thousands of vulnerable people around the world.
Please extend our appreciation to everyone who contributed to the success
of your card sales at the Festival of India. Thank you for getting
involved and for helping to make a difference."

A big heartfelt thank-you to all our friends and supporters who stopped by at our booth at the Festival of India and bought our cards. Another heartfelt thank you to all the businesses for trusting us for your greeting card needs.

$551 raised at the Festival of India fundraiser !

Dear friends,

We have raised a total of $551.00 as a result of the Festival of India fundraiser.

This amount was raised in two parts. First due to the direct card sales at the booth itself and secondly as a result of the customization orders that were received at the festival from a few local businesses. We customized our cards by adding their company logo and a greeting on the inside pages of our cards.

These customization orders were for Diwali cards, Birthday cards and Thank You cards. We have processed all these orders and the combined monies were sent to Doctors without Borders which amounts to $551.00

We warmly appreciate and acknowledge the following local Richmond, Virginia businesses for generously supporting our cause and making a positive difference. They are as follows: Laxmi Palace, The Academy of Academic Excellence, Malabar Indian Cuisine and Mahila Adhyayan Kendra.

We also want to thank the following individuals, namely Rambabu Chirumamilla and Padmarani R & Ruben M Cantu for their kind donations at the Festival of India booth.

THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU!

We are now accepting card orders !!

Folks,

We are now accepting orders for your festival cards and no order is too small. Therefore get in touch with us and we will be glad to talk with you. Please consider to let us customize the inside pages of our cards with your message and a logo. You will be making a big difference for two main reasons. First of all the money that you pay to get your cards printed, customized etc. will the donated to Doctors without Borders. Secondly since the cards are printed locally in Richmond-VA a small portion of your dollar amount will be used locally. Even if you are outside of Richmond-VA, you still donate a chunk of your money to Doctors without Borders. Now that is celebrating with a true festive spirit !! A Win-Win to everyone involved.

If you have any questions please do not hesitate to drop us an e-mail to discuss options, possibilities. We look forward to be working with you. If you know someone who might be interested, then please spread the good word.

A heartfelt 'Thank You' to all those good Samaritans who are already supporting this great cause.

Gallery of cards inspired by Henna Designs

Here are the Heart2Heart cards designs inspired from Henna designs... Hope you enjoy viewing them... If you like, please go ahead and send us an email! Choose any four for just $5...

These cards come with matching envelopes and you can choose any four of these five... If you order 2 sets, you get one card extra!

We had a eventful day today...

Just getting back from Festival of India. We had a nice response to all the new designs that we have created for Diwali and they were much appreciated.

As for us, we had a fun time. There was so much music and dance and the lovely lovely food as well to enjoy, which made it an even better experience. Ahh!

We go back tomorrow from noon until night to have some more fun and enjoy little India in United States of America.

Ready for Festival of India !!

We had a very busy day today! Full of excitement, anticipation and quite satisfying. The cards are ready and packed in neat bundles for the Festival of India tomorrow. We already have three young volunteers ready to earn their community service hours with us.

Earn communtity service points and enjoy with us : )

All the kids who need Community Service points, here is a chance for you to work with artists, learn some marketing skills all the while enjoying the fun filled atmosphere of music, dance and delicious food. We have prepared a Volunteers training package that will enable us to offer community service hours to students desiring them.So stop by at our booth at the Festival of India and receive a brief orientation for about 15 minutes before you begin your service time slot.

We are at the Festival of India !!

Find us at the Festival of India on 25th and 26th of September at the Greater Richmond Convention Center. We have several new card designs ready for the coming festive season. There are new vibrant colored Diwali cards, beautiful henna designs, cards for Christmas and many more to choose from. We also have several traditional Indian designs, most of which are black pen on paper and find them very interesting. 

This is going to be a fund raising event for Doctors without Borders and that means all the proceeds from this event will be donated to them. So do visit us and shop for some pretty hand made cards for your friends and loved ones.

New Designs

We are getting ready for Festival of India, scheduled for the 25^th and 26^th of September. We are working on several new designs. We are very excited to showcase our new designs. We plan to launch greeting card sets for Diwali and Christmas in addition to several very traditional Indian designs. We are creating colorful Diwali cards designs that reminds one of the colorful fireworks and rangoli patterns. We also plan to create some very traditional Indian designs. Check out the slide show as we upload the card designs on it.

We have choosen Doctors without Borders as the beneficiary organization for this year. They will be sending us their fund raising package that we plan to use for the occasion.

Rasika’s Concert-Richmond, VA.

Rasika’s concert was a fundraiser for the Mahila Adhyayan Kendra in Dewas, India. This is our third event of this year and the response was encouraging. Aparna and Kiran coordinated the display and sales table. We received a suggestion during this event from some people, that we need to have a formal representation for Heart2Heart to make program announcements. We will need badges, a better 'elevator speech' for every member of Heart2Heart and some brochures. We learnt the value of good presentation and proper re-presentation in this program.
Something worthy is to come from the 'lessons learnt'. Will keep you posted.

First contribution of Heart2Heart

We donated $250.00 to Doctors without Borders supporting the cause of Haiti’s relief and rehabilitation today. Thanks to Printer's Mark, Richmond, VA for absorbing the first printing cost. It was a much humbling and a fulfilling experience for all of us. May all beings be happy and peaceful. May there be joy and healing. May Mother Earth be healed and whole again.

RichMarathi’s Gudi Padwa celebration in Hindu Center, Richmond, VA

This was the second event for Heart2Heart and we received a good response from the attendees. Almost everyone stopped to look at the cards and many bought them. The realization that 100% of their donations will go towards Haiti’s relief and rehabilitation, motivates several people to make a contribution. Shyamal and Priti coordinated the display and fundraising. Our cards display banner looked good. Makes me feel good about the positive difference we are making in someones lives.

GRTA-Ugadi Celebration, Richmond, VA.

People responded with much enthusiasm to the card designs and showed liking to the handmade look. The organizers made intermittent announcements throughout the program and that helped. We need to have some kind of a banner with the cards display on it.

The cards are here!!

We received our first batch of 200 cards today, Hurray! Kiran picked them up from the printer. We are oh so excited. We met at night at Kiran's place to fold them. Folded cards were to cost just a little extra and we decided to offset it by doing it ourselves. We folded individual cards and neatly stacked them, packing similar design in individual boxes and ran a brief inventory on the numbers. They are looking very pretty with the smooth fine paper and the beautiful curves of the bright art work on them. Our logo of Heart2Heart on the back page with the mission statement reads well. So far so good.

Our first event is up-coming day after tomorrow, the GRTA-Ugadi Celebrations. Greater Richmond’s Telugu Association has generously permitted us to set up a display and sales table for our cards. Kiran is coordinating this event and it was decided that myself and Shyamal will be helping her.

We have some designs now.

Each of us has created a set of card designs and are really excited to get them printed as soon as possible. We love our designs and are also anxious at the same time. Anxious if we will be able to reach our goal of raising funds and supporting the cause that has propelled this endeavor. We will be donating all the funds raised for the relief and rehabilitation of the Earthquake victims in Haiti. We are using the vehicle organisation Doctor's without Borders to make our contributions.

We have carefully choosen the themes of our cards. They are all very special to us, in that they convey the message of love, healing, joy and peace. We want to help and serve and want our designs to reflect these feelings. Most of us make cards for friends and family on the ocassions of birthdays or anniversarries to celebrate their lives and it is such a joy to give it to our loved ones. But making cards that will impact the lives that have been severely disrupted was a very different experience. We had to be sensitive to the design depictions, we had to depict beauty and joy in as simple a manner as possible. Oh how exciting it was to see our art work spread across the table, ready to go. Now printing them is the next big step.

We are printing locally

Visited the printer today-Printer's Mark in Richmond, VA. This is going to be wonderful. Mark was very cooperative and suggested different paper options. We have decided to print the colored cards on white paper and black and white cards on beige colored paper. So far we have 24 good designs showcasing different styles. We will post the link that will showcase our card designs.

Choosing the paper was important because we wanted to cards to look handmade and yet presentable. Not too heavy like the ones you get in stores and not too flimsy either. The surface of the paper needed to be slightly glossy and of the kind that you can write on with ink or ball point pen. We had collected several samples of various cards that we had liked for their paper quality and printing style. I had never paid so much attention to the style of a card until now and doing it was really fun.

Begining...

Today is our first meeting to decide the name, name of the project that we are undertaking. Three of us, sitting across each other in one of the study room of Twin Hickory Area library-brainstorming on a name. After much talking and going back and forth with several names we zero in on Heart 2 Heart. As I talk, I type into my laptop feeling happy that my idea is materializing. See positive intentions do take shape.

We are all very clear about one thing and that is to donate 100% of the funds that we generate towards the relief and rehabilitation of Haiti. We have choosen some organisations to make this initial contribution, but have not finalised on any one. Kiran has taken up the task to do some research and come up with suggestions.