I'm excited to share that Happy Cactus Designs' Sweet Birthday Wishes card is featured in the March/April 2014 issue of Giftware News. Giftware News is one of the top trade magazines for the gift industry. The card is featured in a big spread on new stationery designs.
I have a lot of love for the clean and modern look of clear acrylic desk accessories. The sets below make me want to completely overhaul my desk space!
From Horchow
From CB2
From Neiman Marcus
From Container Store
From Muji
It's time for a little spring cleaning sale. There's no better time to stock up on birthday, baby, and Mother's Day cards! Use code SPRINGCLEAN at checkout for 25% off your entire order.
The U.S. Postal Service continues to be on a roll releasing wonderful and well-designed new stamps. Here are some new favorites I can't wait to purchase.
Songbirds
Jimi Hendrix
Winter Flowers
Great Spangled Fritillary
USS Arizona Memorial
Ferns
Hummingbird
Why stick to the boring and drab silver metal paper clips when you can jazz things up with fun ones? Here's my top five picks for fun paper clips.
Bicycle Paper Clips from The Container Store
Numberclips from the MoMA Store
Animal Paper Clips from Childcraft
Do you follow Happy Cactus Designs on Pinterest? Two of my most popular and growing boards are both dedicated to small businesses.
The first board is Small Business Resources. On this board, you'll find interesting articles and tips I've coming across for more effectively running your small business.
The second is Small Business Social Media Resources. This board is dedicated to useful articles for more effectively and creatively using social media to promote and run your small business. You'll find tips about using Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other platforms here.
Hope you find these boards helpful!
I'm very excited to share that Happy Cactus' Gold Foil Balloon Card is featured in OliveBox's March Birthday Card Box!
For those unfamiliar, OliveBox is a monthly subscription box of fun paper and lifestyle goods from Pink Olive, one of New York City's best gift and stationery shops. The bimonthly Card Box is an offshoot of OliveBox, offering a curated box of well-designed greeting cards organized around a particular theme.
We are delighted to be featured in March's Birthday Card Box alongside great birthday cards from Steel Petal Press, Sugar and Type, Foxtrot Press, Foxy and Winston, and H.Graphic Studio.
To sign up for OliveBox or the Card Box click here.
I love the roll-up pencil case that I use for all of my pens and pencils. I'm outgrowing that case, though, and have been perusing other options to add to my collection. Here's my top five pencil cases to check out.
Sideshow Press Canoe Pencil Case
Colorblock Pencil Case from Schoolhouse Electric
One of my favorite new cards in the Early Spring collection is the Yippee!!!! card. While many of my designs feature intricate patterns and motifs, sometimes I realize when working out ideas that just one word can make the card. "Yippee!!!!" is hand-lettered in rainbow colors. I think it's a great card for any celebratory occasion! Personally, I've sent it to a friend celebrating a pregnancy and a couple who were recently engaged. Shop it here.
I could be considered a hoarder of fun and functional pens. I'm pretty sure you can never have too many! Here's a few favorites:
I've written here in the past about my love of Pinterest and how small businesses can harness the digital inspiration board site to promote their products. I'm back to share more about why I recommend building an official Pinterest board for your business sooner rather than later.
After analyzing my web traffic, I was happily surprised to find that the majority of my traffic from social sites is coming directly from Pinterest. With Facebook's ever-changing algorithm making it harder that ever to get your posts seen, I think it's an optimal time to lean more heavily on pinning.
So why should you have a business Pinterest page? Here's my top five reasons:
1. It's where users are flocking…and converting to buyers. Web visitors who find your site via Pinterest even have been shown to spend more per visit to you site than those coming from Facebook. Mobile transactions through Pinterest rose 77% between January 2013 and January 2014. Wow!
I found this infographic with more Pinterest statistics fascinating.
2. It's incredibly easy to verify your website on Pinterest. Verifying your site lets other pinners see more information about your company like your complete URL and a checkmark to show that Pinterest has verified your site. All you usually have to do is insert a snippet of code on your website. Follow the steps here.
Side note - It's also quite easy to convert your existing personal page to a business page.
Personally, I don't mind pinning personal things like trips I'm planning or clothing I like to my business page. In fact, I actually think it adds more character to my brand and lets my followers learn more about my tastes and aesthetic.
3. As a business page, you get access to Pinterest's analytics for your boards: see what is getting pinned and repinned. Gain insight into the impressions your pins are making and track trends.
4. You have the ability to use rich pins. These special pins include more relevant details about your products. For example, when someone pins a birthday card from my site to Pinterest, the "rich" pin includes information like price, availability, and where to find it online. This information also stays with the pin regardless of who else repins it.
5. You can easily get code to add Pin It buttons to your product pages.This makes it that much easier for your site's visitors to pin your images. It's one thing to pin images of your own products to Pinterest, but even better when your site's visitors pin images themselves to share with new audiences .
The most common requests I tend to get for personalized stationery orders are for little boys and girls. Custom stationery makes a great gift for a new baby or a little one celebrating a birthday. And remember, all personalized flat and folded cards are 25% off through March 7! Get more details here.
Here are my most popular designs for boys and girls.
