Calendars

Before we get too far into 2013, I want to share the little calendars that I made for this year. They started out as Christmas gifts for my book club, but I was pretty happy with how they turned out and made a few more for friends and family members as well.  Early in the year, I'd thought about doing more of my "botanical hearts" to make one for each month, but that just didn't happen. As it turned out, I had fun selecting from among my drawings to find one that suited each month (sorry, my photos are a tad askew):

I love packaging, so I placed the pages in a festive red box mailer from Paper Source. The little glassine envelope holds a stand and a hanging clip. The stand is a little place card holder that I found at Crate and Barrel. Because the paper that I used was a little too thin to stand upright on its own, I cut a piece of heavy white card stock slightly smaller than the 5 x 7 calendar pages; it can be placed in the stand behind the page.

As an option to the stand, I included a little bulldog clip so that the whole year can be tacked up on a bulletin board. And since the pages are 5 x 7, they could also be displayed in a simple photo frame.

I got a lot of  nice "You should sell these!" remarks, which gave me etsy-on-the-brain again, but honestly, I'm still not convinced that I could make any profit in that scenario. Maybe I'll stop blathering on about it and just try it someday. Then again, I ran across this great piece yesterday on  the fabulous website, Brain Pickings. In a letter to his teenage son back in 1927, writer Sherwood Anderson wrote this wonderful sentence:

“The object of art is not to make salable pictures. It is to save yourself.”

Amen.

Notecards II

Yikes... it's been a month since I've posted! I've been busy with a couple of projects that I'll share with you shortly, but in the meantime, I thought I'd show you a set of cards that I put together for a friend's birthday. (Apologies for the uneven lighting in this shot; I was rushing around, as usual. But not a bad shot for an iPhone...) I made a different set a while back (you can see that post, with details about the supplies that I used, here). However, instead of spray mount, I used a wonderful little Tombow adhesive this time...so easy! And for this set, I used Paper Source's "Cement" for the A7 notecards and envelopes and "Lake" for the box.

Here's the label that is on the box bottom...I completely forgot to photograph the finished box from the top, but it also had a vellum band like the first set. This time I used one of the flowers from the "Yesterday-Today-Tomorrow" card as the sticker.

I keep thinking that I might someday get organized enough to put cards and prints in an Etsy shop, but I'm not sure that it'd be worth the time and effort. I'd love to hear from those of you that are Etsy sellers...has your experience been positive?

Notecards

I recently made a little set of notecards for a special girlfriend's birthday. She's a loyal blog visitor, and a writer of lovely notes, so I knew she'd appreciate them. I decided to focus on drawings of edibles, as she's also a wonderful cook.

It was such fun selecting the blank cards and box at my local Paper Source—I could spend hours in that shop! I printed the drawings on my inkjet printer on Canon Matte Photo Paper. (It's a great heavyweight paper, and is reasonably priced, too.) Then, I trimmed them and spray-mounted them onto 5 x 7 notecards (color: "paper bag") and they fit beautifully in a little mailer box (color: "chartreuse"). To make them look more "store-bought", I made a contents label for the back of the box in Adobe Illustrator.

Finally, I cut a vellum band to go around the box, and added a little sticker  that I made by printing one of my drawings onto Avery Clear Sticker Paper that I had lying around. (Being a former graphic designer, I love playing with the packaging details.)

While I'm not quite ready to venture into Etsy territory, I definitely had a great time putting this little package together!