Living Ink Creates Greeting Cards with 'Time-Lapse Ink' Using Sustainable Algae

Don’t be surprised if someday you find algae growing all over your greeting cards, even if what those tiny, growing plants tell you is surprising.

Colorado State University biochemists Steve Albers and Scott Fulbright have turned a serendipitous discovery into novel greeting cards that change with the passage of time. Last month their company, Living Ink, began taking its first orders via Kickstarter.

Albers and Fulbright, while researching the possibility of turning sustainable algae into ink, discovered that the algae-based ink changed from one day to the next. Using algae that grows at different rates in a “greenhouse” frame, messages written on cards with the company’s special pens are revealed over a span of days.