How do those creative writers create greeting cards?

"I first got involved because GMR called me with a pretty vague idea about a promotion they were doing with some retail store songs," McCurdy said. "It turned out that it was for greeting cards, and they wanted 20-second songs for every holiday, especially birthdays.

"I've now done songs for Valentine's Day, Halloween, Mother's Day, Christmas and teenager's birthdays. I've had a lot of fun with it. For the teenager birthday cards, I actually had to listen to Hannah Montana and the Jonas Brothers. I went on iTunes and went through their albums for some ideas."

McCurdy said he writes lyrics first and then tries to come up with a melody.

"I've been lucky to work with a guy named Chris Hanson, who is a phenomenal multi-instrumentalist and a phenomenal producer," he said. "I'll go in with ideas and say 'Let's make this one sound like the Fratellis,' and we'll have a bunch of guitars on there.

"It's been a lot of fun. I will go in with about 15 ideas and we'll come out with 10 20-second 'masterpieces.' I'm really surprised at how well some of these have turned out."

While he's found the experience to be creatively inspiring, McCurdy said his greeting card "sidelight" has impinged on his regular writing.

"There are times when Chris will say 'Are you sure you want to give this melody to a greeting card?'" he said, laughing. "There are some songs that I may change the words to and make them three or four minutes long and put them into my show.

"So far, it's been a lot of fun."

Once the artist finishes a batch of songs, the people at Banshee review them, pick the "best of the best" and present them to the client. Illustrations are added later. McCurdy and the other musicians receive a fee for their work and a small cut of the card sales.

Though this is a relatively new endeavor, it's reasonable to expect that some cards will become popular "staples" in the market and will be augmented with new cards every season.

"There are always going to be cards that sell well," Heuser said, adding that Banshee is "open to submissions."

"We want to give everyone a chance,: he said. "We're not limited to two or three writers. They all understand that. It can be competitive. We're building a huge catalog of different music. We're up and running now."