I'm leaving for the National Stationery Show in a few short days, and I can't wait to share my new products with retailers attending the show! Here's a behind-the-scenes look at my pre-show mailer that I recently sent out to stores. It's customary to send invitations to retailers inviting them to visit your booth at the National Stationery Show. This year, I did a 5"x7" flat card using a design based off my new Emerald Flowers patterned card (debuting at the show).
The front of the card had pertinent information about my booth and new product releases, while the back was covered in the hand-drawn floral vines. The white against the emerald green color really pops!
I decided to use a kraft envelope and wanted to use white ink for the address. One of my favorite parts of the mailer is the floral oval stamp on the front of the envelope that I wrote each retailer's address inside. I had a stamp made based on an original drawing that matched the card's floral vines, then I stamped each envelope using white ink. I used a white gel ink pen (my new obsession) to hand-address each card.
Finally, I choose the USPS's brand new vintage seed packet stamps. I absolutely adore these stamps and loved the bold flowers against the brown kraft!
I hope retailers enjoyed receiving these invitations as much as I enjoyed putting them together. See you at Booth 2240 in New York!
A bunny Peep drawing I did earlier this year! Have a great Easter weekend!
Easter comes early this year (March 31) and I'm excited to share two new Easter cards I've designed.
The design for the Happy Easter card first popped into my head back in November. The idea came from memories of a large Easter egg hunt my family threw every year at my grandmother's house when I was little. Colorful hand drawn decorative eggs and little bunnies peek behind grass.
The second card is a cross made up of tiny hand drawn flowers and vines set against a pale minty green background. While appropriate for Easter, it can also be used for baptisms, confirmations, and other religious occasions.
"Bigger Than Love," a song off the new album from Ben Gibbard (of Death Cab for Cutie, The Postal Service), has been stuck in my head! With the words to the song on repeat in my head, I decided to practice my hand-lettering skills with the lyrics.
I recently had the pleasure to work on a custom stationery project for a sweet new baby girl and her mother.
Last summer, I worked with the mom-to-be on folded thank you note cards she could use for baby gifts. She was planning on naming her daughter Violet, so I created a pattern of small hand-drawn violets for the cards.
Following Violet's birth, I was thrilled to be asked to create flat note cards featuring Violet's name. I used the same violet flower pattern motif to line the bottom of the card and used a feminine and fun script for her name.
I love collaborating on projects like this one and was honored to get to work with the new mother twice. You can see more custom Happy Cactus Designs projects here.
My dear friend Sara will be marrying her love Phil very soon and I was so happy to work with her on custom stationery. She needed personalized thank you notes that she and her fiancé could send both pre- and post-wedding. I showed her a number of motifs and she chose a hand-drawn diamond pattern.
Since the cards would be coming from both of them, we didn't want colors to be too feminine and settled on a navy blue and orange combo.
For the pre-wedding cards, we stuck with just their first names in one of my new favorite fonts.
For post-wedding cards, I did a monogram using their new shared last initial.
I love how these turned out and can't wait for these two love birds to wed!
