It's hard to believe that it's already mid-April and time to start thinking about upcoming spring holidays and occasions!
Mother's Day comes early this year - Sunday, May 8. Just a few short weeks away!
With springtime comes weddings and graduation events and I've got you covered with cards for those events as well.
Finally, Father's Day is Sunday, June 19. You can find all of the cards in the shop here.
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In the stationery industry, seasonal designs are planned well in advance. For Happy Cactus, Christmas 2013 designs were first released in May, with a second release of additional designs in early August. It's has been a little tricky for me to create fresh designs for a holiday so far in advance, but it's becoming more natural as I become more seasoned as a stationery and greeting card designer.
Out of a variety of card categories, my love cards have been my strongest sellers to date, and I am very excited about the latest cards I'll be introducing this season. While I love a great Valentine's Day card, I prefer general love cards that can be used for a variety of occasions - a new relationship, an anniversary, a wedding celebration….the list goes on. Here's a round-up of some of my old favorites and best-sellers:
Love Birds: The teal green background makes the sweet and colorful flowers really pop. I love the "Love Birds" hand-lettered sentiment.
Be My Valentine: The sentiment is surrounded by tons of tiny hand-drawn hearts. The hearts remind me of little doodles you might draw in your notebook when pining over a new love.
Love Heart Blocks: Spell out your love with letter comprised of tiny hand-drawn hearts. I love this combination of colors and used a similar scheme for my Thank You Zigzag card.
I'll be sharing my new releases for Valentine's Day soon, so stay tuned!
I have been an avid reader of the magazine Sweet Paul since it first launched a few years ago. Paul and his team always put together beautiful issues full of tasty recipes, imaginative craft projects, and well-curated items. I am so thrilled to share that my String of Lights Christmas place cards are featured in Sweet Paul's special holiday issue! Read the entire issue here, and check out our place card on page 8!
I'm headed back up to Dallas this weekend for the Hyer Happy Hollydays Bazaar in Dallas. It's held at Hyer Elementary, 3920 Caruth Boulevard, in University Park. This will be my second year to do this event and it is sure to be a fun time. After seeing how excited customers were about Christmas cards and gift tags at last weekend's Dallas Flea, I'm looking forward to another weekend event.
I had such a blast at my first big holiday show of the season, the Dallas Flea, held near downtown Dallas. This was the third Flea I've done and it is such a fun event with a great mix of vintage, handmade, and food vendors. I shared a booth space with Dixie Goods Company and we loved meeting new shoppers and seeing old faces. Here's a few shots from the day.
Booth set-up. I'm in love with my new 6-tier display!
Boxed holiday cards on sale
Kady selling collars
My dear friend Cassie and Bucky, her precious 7-month old King Charles Cavalier, came to help out!
Merry Merry Trees was the best seller of the day. I sold out of all of the boxed sets I brought with me!
The U.S. Postal Service has unveiled their new stamps for the 2013 holiday season and they are pretty great! They also have a great website featuring the stories behind the new stamps. Did you know the first holiday stamp was released in 1962? Here are my favorites from the new releases:
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.
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.
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.
I'm excited to share the latest releases from Happy Cactus Designs with you! Once I returned from the Stationery Show and settled back into my normal routines, I got to work doodling, drawing, and brainstorming ideas for new cards. It was so nice to get back in the creative groove. One downside to all of the preparation for NSS is that there's little time for creative work, so it was wonderful to be able to just draw again.
What resulted was a new collection of cheerful and fun cards that I'm really proud of. I'm also quite excited about additional Christmas cards I developed. Designing holiday cards when it is 100 degrees outside is always a challenge! They will be available for sale soon (I feel like the holidays will be here before we know it!).
Retailers can view all of the new releases along with our existing collection in our catalog here, or contact us at hello{at}happycactusdesigns.com for a hard copy and sample.
Today I thought I'd share some behind-the-scenes images of my new Mother's Day card since the holiday is just a week away! The idea for this card was conceived during a major creative session last fall. I knew I wanted to do a card with an all-over floral design, not just a repeat. It started as a light pencil sketch on drawing paper, then I went over the design in pen. Like the majority of my work, the design developed as I drew it - I didn't have a set plan for what the "blooms" would look like.
I left space in the center for a sentiment, and eventually decided that this feminine design would be perfect for a Mother's Day card. The size of the space worked perfectly to pen "You're the Best Mom Ever."
After scanning my design and doing some minor clean up, I decided upon a purple color palette, using a lighter lavender shade balanced by a darker purple for the outline. And after a lot of focused work, the final product!
