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Do You Really Love Your Mom If You Get Her a Last-Minute Mother's Day Card?

 La Familia Green owner Mollie Green and her dog, Zuzu, are preparing for the National Stationary Show in New York later this month. Green's greeting card line includes Mother's Day cards inspired by her late grandmother.
La Familia Green owner Mollie Green and her dog, Zuzu, are preparing for the National Stationary Show in New York later this month. Green's greeting card line includes Mother's Day cards inspired by her late grandmother.
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DNAinfo/Mark Konkol

ROGERS PARK — If you’re one of those people who makes a last-minute stop at the drugstore to get your mom a mass-produced greeting card for Mother's Day, do you really love her?

That’s a question artist Mollie Green thinks you might want to ask yourself before getting mom a card this year.

“If you love your mother — because maybe we take for granted that our mother knows that we love and appreciate her — I have to say it’s better to buy a special card from a smaller designer or a boutique,” she said. “You know, maybe it shows you care about her a little bit more.”

After all, Green, the artist and owner of La Familia Green greeting cards, learned the art of making people feel special from her stylish and overly polite grandma, the late Alura Spikes of Lubbock, Texas.

“She had this amazing style. She was super generous and always sent cards to people and had little gifts around the house in case people stopped by,” Green said. “Now, she didn’t like everyone. But if you got a gift, you know she thought you were special.”

Grandma Spikes’ love of random gifting and folk art has always been a subtle influence behind Green’s greeting card line, especially around Mother’s Day.

Growing up in the Texas panhandle, Green spent quite a bit of time with her grandma.

They’d take trips to Santa Fe, a mecca for folk art, to shop and maybe sit on a bench for a spell to watch people walk by, two things that define her handmade cards.

“In some ways, I’m keeping her legacy going,” Green said at her Rogers Park studio.

You can see it in some of Green’s most popular cards Mother's Day cards — including folky images inspired by her grandma’s always-manicured nails and the fancy Hermès bracelets she liked to wear.

This year, she’s added a scratch-and-sniff Mother’s Day card that’s a “toast” to moms — and smells like charred bread — and a cat-themed card that’s good for either moms who like kittens or your childless cat lady friends.

Green, who moved to the Chicago suburbs in high school and studied fine art at the School of the Art Institute, got her start in printmaking in 2004 while working at the now-closed stationery store, Paper Boy in Lakeview.

“Greeting cards were becoming a thing. Smaller card lines were starting to pop up, and it was really inspiring,” she said. “It felt like it was a way to combine my printmaking skills with my sense of humor, plus growing up, my family owned a small furniture store. I liked the idea of having a family business.”

Green, who is not Latino, named her company La Familia Green — which means “The Green Family”  in Spanish — because that’s who junk mail was addressed to when she lived in Logan Square before the neighborhood gentrified into the hipster hot spot it is today.

“I use a lot of the same characters and animals in my work, and in a sense I felt like I created this little family. So, the name works,” she said. “I really do love Mexican folk art and Mexican food and Mexican culture. I’m influenced by it and use it a lot. I’m not Mexican, but I do wonder if people think I am.”

Green, who hawks her cards at local shops, including Paper Doll, Foursided and other cute boutiques around the country, puts out a new line five times a year.

“I try to make cards that reflect trends that stand out to me. It’s like curating what’s in my head in card form that I put out there and hope people like,” she said. “I people watch and pick up on trends and things that are very specific.”

For instance, the next set of designs she’s set to debut at the National Stationery Show in New York this month includes an “on point” gal wearing geometric jewelry and a felt hat posed with a cactus and '70s-style wall-hanging that’s all the rage with hipsters these days.

“I like finding these things about what people like and turning them into cards that my audience can relate to, in celebration or in mockery,” Green said.

That goes for Mother's Day cards, too.
 
One of Green’s favorites was inspired by her mom — who secretly buys La Familia Green cards at any shop that sells them and probably brags a little too much to her friends about her daughter the artist.

“They know way too much about me,” Green says.

On plain brown paper the card says, “I promise to be careful crossing the street. Happy Mother's Day.”

Sometimes, true love is telling your mom exactly what she wants to hear.

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