Happy to share that an interview with yours truly is up on Ecka & Pecka's blog. Learn more about how I started my company, where I find inspiration, and plans for the future! Read it here.
Halloween is a few short weeks away. We love our Trick or Treat card paired with our friend Dixie Goods Company's handmade Sweets Collar. You can never have enough candy corns this time of year! Shop the Halloween greeting card here.
Cheers to the weekend! Around Happy Cactus Designs, I've been prepping a few orders going out to stores while also staying busy launching the holiday collection this week. Here's my favorite things for this week!
DESIGN/ Loving Cristina Vanko's Modern Day Snail Mail project. For seven days, she responded to text messages with her own handwritten ones. So cool!
READ / Did you know Domino magazine is back? It's now not only a quarterly magazine, but also an e-commerce market.
EYE CANDY / I have a print by artist Matte Stephens in my office and am excited to see his latest releases, including this limited edition print of Central Park.
SMALL BUSINESS / Amazon is hoping to compete with PayPal by allowing customers at third-party retail websites to use their payment information stored on Amazon during checkout. I wonder how many retailers will get involved.
WATCH / Cool animation done for the new video for The Lumineer's Submarines.
Christmas will be here before you know it (75 days officially) and Happy Cactus Designs is excited to share the new collection of holiday and Christmas cards!
Some new holiday cards debuted at the National Stationery Show in May, and I released another batch of designs to retailers this summer. Now, I'm excited to share them with you! You can check out the entire collection, plus our best-selling favorites, here.
How often do you feel like you are running out of desk space? I felt like I was constantly making crazy piles and losing track of important pieces of paper because of my disorganized desk. I went on an expedition to find fun and functional items to organize my workspace, and these three desktop items have totally transformed my desk into a more clean and organized space where I can actually do work!
I love our Thank You Mint Flowers card paired with the Cambridge Satchel Company's timeless mint green bag. Shop the thank you card here.
Friday is here! Finally! I've been busy putting the finishing touches on the Happy Cactus holiday collection and finalizing plans for some holiday shows (more details on both soon). Here's my favorite finds this week:
DESIGN / The winners of Fast Company's 2013 Innovation by Design Awards come from some fascinating companies.
EYE CANDY / Swooning over the visual blog of Japanese illustrator Itsuko Suzuki.
WATCH / An amazing video showing what the final stages of construction of the Sagrada Familia will look like.
SMALL BUSINESS / Rena Tom on using Pinterest as your visual resume.
LISTEN / I forgot how great this Iron and Wine song, Walking Far From Home, is.
Believe it or not, Halloween will be here before we know it! I'm excited to share a Halloween card I designed this year. I hand-lettered "Trick or Treat" and drew some candy corns, one of my favorite Halloween candies. Since I was young, my aunt has sent me a Halloween card each year, and I can't wait to send her this one soon! You can shop the Halloween card here.
Dark florals are very "in" this season, and I am loving our new Midnight Rose patterned card paired with Erdem's stunning Floral Jacquard Shift Dress. You can shop the card here.
Above: Close-Up of the Field of Blooms Card.
Whew! Who can believe that it's the last week of September? I have been working diligently all week on plans for holiday shows that will be taking place in the upcoming months as well as working on more product photography of Christmas cards that will be releasing soon. Here's my favorite finds this week:
DESIGN / These amazing detailed carpets drawn by a Bic pen are unreal.
READ / Sarah Schwartz, editor of Stationery Trends Magazine, has unveiled a fun new paper blog called The Paper Chronicles. Congrats, Sarah!
EYE CANDY / How cool are the minimalist icons Petite Alma did for temporary tattoo company Tattly?
SMALL BUSINESS / Thoughtful article on Design Sponge about how to leverage your press into sales.
WATCH / The Stir Kinetic desk knows when you should sit, stand, or breathe. I need one stat!
LISTEN / The Phosphorescent album has been keeping me company in the studio this week.
Lately I've been seeing more and more news about the power of Pinterest to drive sales and boost brand awareness. There's no doubt that Pinterest has become a key tool in the social media marketer's toolbox. With over 70 million registered users and a growing audience in Europe, there's wonderful opportunities to harness Pinterest to raise brand awareness and increase the potential for sales.
According to recent research, 21% of Pinterest users go to the store to buy an item they liked or pinned, and nearly a quarter of socially-generated online sales these days comes from Pinterest. I didn't expect numbers this high! From a quick review of my own Google Analytics, the largest driver of traffic to my site from social sources is Pinterest - double the amount from Twitter and five times the number of visitors from Facebook.
Well-known companies are also becoming savvier about how they promote their brands on Pinterest. For example, J. Crew recently used the site to share sneak peeks of new items in their Fall collection. Many companies also aim to not overload their Pinterest boards with only pins of their own products. Rather, they create boards sharing other images that are inspiring and in line with their aesthetic and brand identity. Two such examples are West Elm's "Dream House of the Day" board and Poppin's color board. Etsy has "guest pinners" that create their own boards with products from the marketplace. Pinterest is impacting offline marketing as well. Nordstrom places tags with the Pinterest logo on products in-store to identify them as popular on Pinterest.
Just as "Pin It to Win It" competitions are becoming more prevalent in the marketplace, Pinterest announced last week that it has begun experimenting with Promoted Pins.
With Pinterest's continued growth, should small business owners spend less time focusing on Twitter and Facebook for social promotion and instead turn their attention to building a Pinterest audience to promote their brands? What strategies are you using to promote your brand on Pinterest?
P.S.
Looking to learn more about using Pinterest for small business? Check out my tips here.
Foxes for Fall! I am loving our new "Crazy For You" foxes card paired with Serena and Lily's Fox Sheet Set. Shop the fox card here.
