Six Weird Holidays, Six Quick Card Projects
November Edition: From Pickles to Planets
November is nearly here, and while everyone else is busy preparing for Thanksgiving and Christmas, we’re going to take another little detour through the wonderfully peculiar world of unofficial holidays.
Welcome to the second edition of Six Weird Holidays, Six Quick Card Projects!
If you joined us in October, you already know the idea. We pick six unusual celebrations, turn each into a small creative challenge, and see how many greeting-card possibilities we can squeeze out of them.
No enormous collections required. No weeks of preparation. Just one good idea, a little imagination, and perhaps a character who deserves to appear on more than one card.
This month, we’re playing with folded paper, pickles, buttons, absolute nonsense, mathematics, and Martians.
Ready? Let’s get weird.
🕊️ 1. Origami Day: November 11
Mini Brief: A Little Paper Magic
We’re greeting-card artists. Paper is practically our natural habitat.
Origami Day celebrates the Japanese art of paper folding, and it’s a wonderful excuse to explore designs that look three-dimensional without requiring any actual folding.
Imagine a delicate paper crane floating among clouds, a tiny folded elephant carrying a birthday balloon, or an entire garden of origami flowers.
You could even create an illustration of a paper animal who has apparently come to life and is thoroughly surprised by the experience.
Possible card directions:
- Birthday: “Another year beautifully unfolded.”
- Thinking of You: “Sending a little peace your way.”
- New Baby: “Something wonderful is unfolding.”
- Congratulations: “Look what you’ve made possible!”
- Anniversary: Two origami cranes forming a heart.
Quick-project challenge: Choose one recognizable origami shape and illustrate it in three different ways: elegant, playful, and humorous.
A paper crane might become a sophisticated sympathy design, a whimsical birthday character, or a Christmas ornament.
One shape. Three completely different audiences.
🥒 2. National Pickle Day: November 14
Mini Brief: A Pickle With Personality
Some subjects practically demand to be taken seriously.
The pickle is not one of them.
Give your pickle an expression, a personality, and perhaps a tiny pair of shoes. Is it grumpy? Overconfident? Hopelessly romantic? A sophisticated gentleman wearing a monocle?
Maybe it’s a pickle having a very bad day.
Or a cucumber celebrating its transformation into something magnificent.
The possibilities are surprisingly extensive for a vegetable that spends most of its life in a jar.
Possible card directions:
- Birthday: “You’re kind of a big dill.”
- Friendship: “Life would be in a pickle without you.”
- Congratulations: “You’re a really big dill!”
- Love: “I relish every moment with you.”
- Get Well: “Hope you’re feeling less sour soon.”
Quick-project challenge: Create one pickle character with a distinctive personality.
Then put that character into three different situations.
A pickle at a birthday party. A pickle in love. A pickle celebrating Christmas.
The trick is to make the character recognizable enough that the same little green troublemaker can return for future occasions.
🧵 3. National Button Day: November 16
Mini Brief: Cute as a Button
Buttons are wonderfully ordinary objects.
Until you start looking at them as design elements.
Think about old-fashioned button tins, mismatched collections, colorful sewing boxes, vintage clothing, handmade toys, and those beautiful little mother-of-pearl buttons that seem far too pretty to hide on a shirt.
Buttons also lend themselves to clever typography, decorative borders, and illustrations with a handmade appearance.
Or perhaps your button has a face.
And opinions.
Possible card directions:
- New Baby: “Cute as a button!”
- Birthday: “You’re sew special!”
- Friendship: “We just click.”
- Thank You: “Thanks for holding everything together.”
- Mother’s Day: A beautiful arrangement of vintage buttons forming a heart.
Quick-project challenge: Create an illustration using buttons as the main visual element.
Try a button bouquet, a button rainbow, or a little button-eyed character.
Then explore whether the design works better as a nostalgic illustration, a modern graphic composition, or something delightfully whimsical.
Don’t overlook the potential for sewing and crafting enthusiasts. A well-designed button illustration could become a useful addition to several year-round card categories.
🎩 4. National Absurdity Day: November 20
Mini Brief: Absolutely Ridiculous
Finally!
A holiday that gives us permission to abandon common sense entirely.
National Absurdity Day celebrates the ridiculous, the illogical, and the gloriously nonsensical.
For greeting-card artists, this is practically a creative playground.
Imagine a goldfish walking its pet human.
A giraffe attempting to hide behind a lamppost.
A very serious penguin conducting an orchestra of vegetables.
A snail receiving a speeding ticket.
Or a distinguished gentleman attending a business meeting with a large cabbage on his head.
The important thing is to present the absurd situation as though absolutely nothing unusual is happening.
That’s often where the best humor lives.
Possible card directions:
- Birthday: “Another year older. Reality remains optional.”
- Congratulations: “Against all reasonable expectations, you did it!”
- Friendship: “Normal friends are overrated.”
- Retirement: “You can finally stop pretending any of this makes sense.”
- Just Because: “I saw this and thought of you. Make of that what you will.”
Quick-project challenge: Combine two things that have absolutely no business being together.
An animal and an occupation. A household object and an emotion. A vegetable and a historical event.
Create a funny illustration, then challenge yourself to find at least two occasions where it could become a greeting card.
Sometimes the most commercially useful humorous designs begin with the least sensible ideas.
🌀 5. Fibonacci Day: November 23
Mini Brief: Beautifully Mathematical
November 23 is written as 11/23 in the United States, giving us the first four numbers of the Fibonacci sequence: 1, 1, 2, 3.
In this mathematical sequence, each new number is the sum of the previous two.
It continues 5, 8, 13, 21, and so on.
But you don’t need to be a mathematician to find inspiration here.
Fibonacci numbers and related spiral constructions have inspired artists and designers for generations. Think spiraling compositions, botanical illustrations, geometric patterns, and beautiful arrangements of shapes.
Or forget the elegant approach entirely and make a card for someone who genuinely enjoys mathematical jokes.
Yes, those people exist.
Some of them even have birthdays.
Possible card directions:
- Birthday: “You can count on a wonderful birthday.”
- Love: “My love for you keeps growing.”
- Congratulations: “Your possibilities are multiplying.”
- Teacher Appreciation: “Thanks for helping everything add up.”
- Friendship: “Some things just add up perfectly. Like us.”
Quick-project challenge: Create one design inspired by a mathematical pattern.
It could be an elegant spiral composition, a geometric floral arrangement, or a humorous illustration featuring an enthusiastic mathematician.
Then adapt the design for two different audiences: someone who loves mathematics and someone who simply appreciates beautiful artwork.
This is a particularly interesting exercise in creating cards that appeal to niche interests without limiting their wider usefulness.
🚀 6. Red Planet Day: November 28
Mini Brief: Greetings From Mars
On November 28, 1964, NASA launched Mariner 4, the spacecraft that would eventually send back the first close-up images of Mars.
Red Planet Day commemorates that historic mission.
But for our purposes, it also provides a wonderful excuse to populate the greeting-card universe with Martians.
Friendly Martians. Grumpy Martians. Romantic Martians.
Martians attempting to understand birthday candles.
Martians decorating a Christmas tree.
Martians who have traveled millions of miles only to discover that Earthlings still haven’t learned how to fold a fitted sheet.
There’s room here for vintage science-fiction aesthetics, cute modern illustration, retro space-age graphics, and elaborate imaginary alien worlds.
Possible card directions:
- Birthday: “Hope your birthday is out of this world!”
- Love: “I’d cross the universe for you.”
- Friendship: “You’re my favorite Earthling.”
- Congratulations: “Your success is astronomical!”
- Christmas: “Season’s greetings from another planet.”
Quick-project challenge: Design one Martian character who could become the star of an entire miniature card collection.
Give your alien a recognizable appearance and personality.
Then imagine how that character would celebrate an ordinary Earth occasion.
Birthdays, weddings, graduations, Christmas, Valentine’s Day.
The stranger the alien’s interpretation of human customs, the more opportunities for humor.
The Real Challenge: Make Your Weird Idea Work Harder
By now, you may have noticed a pattern.
We’re not really trying to convince everyone to buy a greeting card specifically for Fibonacci Day or National Pickle Day.
Although if there’s a customer out there desperately searching for the perfect pickle-themed celebration card, we’d certainly like to help.
The bigger opportunity is to use these unusual holidays as creative starting points.
A pickle becomes a birthday character.
A button collection becomes a beautiful Mother’s Day design.
An origami crane becomes an elegant Thinking of You card.
A Martian becomes the star of a Christmas greeting.
And that utterly ridiculous snail receiving a speeding ticket?
Well, that might just become a fantastic belated birthday card.
Your November challenge is simple:
Choose one of these six unusual holidays and create one design inspired by it.
Then ask yourself three questions:
- Who else might enjoy this illustration?
- Which everyday occasion could it work for?
- Could a different greeting or small visual change turn it into another useful card?
You don’t need to turn every experiment into a collection.
Sometimes one excellent design is enough.
But sometimes a tiny idea turns out to have eight arms, six legs, or a surprisingly large number of tentacles.
Wait. That was last month’s octopus.
Never mind.
Happy creating, and may your November be wonderfully weird!
Curious About These Holidays?
For more information and inspiration, explore:
- Time and Date: November’s Fun Holidays
- Origami Day: History and Traditions
- The Old Farmer’s Almanac: November Holidays and Fun Facts
These are mostly unofficial, lighthearted observances, but they make excellent excuses to exercise our creative muscles.
Happy Designing!
Corrie
