To celebrate an occasion, I took my Delhi office team for lunch and later came to Full Circle at Khan Market for coffee. It was nostalgic coming back to the place where it all began in 1999. One greeting card at a time, I built my organisation and business from scratch. I met the manager Jolly after many years, she is one person who has seen me grow all along. She said a customer who earlier bought a lot of our handmade cards from Full Circle was back in Delhi and was asking for more.
I told her that we stopped making them over 5-6 years ago due to the dwindling demand and the move towards digitalisation. We are just exhausting the ones we have from our earlier stock. A lot of the older designs now adore the wall of our studio.
How it began:
I started by making each card and envelope by hand, I would make each envelope symmetrically perfect by using measurements and kept repeating this for all of them. It did get monotonous at times but I had Indian Ocean for company. Initially I managed to make a few but this number further progressed to thousands which were made by craftsmen that I had trained. I then started exporting to a few countries. Many were featured in trend shows and international exhibitions. I thought of the card as my canvas and all my creativity would go in creating newer ones. At one time I had over a 1000 designs but now only a few of them remain.
You can see a few of the earlier designs below:
Anand Prakash Blog 