Ist month anniversary at Etsy!

Just sold and relisted this pretty 'Dream Big' art print from the Cartolina Etsy shop. This has been one of the most popular prints in the shop so far. Thanks to everyone who has purchased items from the shop and made our first month at Etsy a roaring success!

Retro wall art

These are really nice posters produced by Restyle Shop. They features classic midcentury iconic ceramics by Scandinavian designers, Cathrineholm, Stig Lindberg, Marianne Westman. They'd look great in any kitchen - country, modern or mid century.

Oh Pangaea Books!

One of the reasons that I love vintage imagery is the early printing processes that they used in the past. A lot of vintage imagery that we have access to is engraved - steel engravings, copper engraving etc. And I like nothing better than to inspect beautiful old printing with a magnifying glass or loupe. That's why I was so drawn to this gorgeous book from Oh Pangaea Books - hand bound books. The bird on this book looks a lot like it is from a book of natural history perhaps in the 1870s - and I love how huge it is.

Open for business!

Hey, guess what? We've got an Etsy store and I'm so excited! You know, we have some pretty fancy stores in places like London, New York, Vancouver and Sydney that carry our cards but, I'm really thrilled with our little Etsy shop. It took a few days to put it together but as of today we are open for business. As I mentioned last week, we will be selling our new Cartolina Art Prints in the shop exclusively - these aren't available in stores. So if you're looking for something super pretty, vintage and fabulous - or if your looking for a gift for the happy couple - look no further - the Cartolina Etsy store is officially open for business - yay!

Please note that any orders made this week will ship on Monday - I ordered some perfect square mailing tubes - but they won't be delivered until Monday! Thanks!

Inspiration - stitching!

Oh these are so pretty! So unusual and so fun. Don't you love the colour choices and the layering? These beauties are from The Candy Thief!

Thank you! (and giveaway winners)

So I wanted to say thanks to everyone who participated in all our excitement last week. Almost 80 of you took the time to leave comments and let me know which of our potential art prints should be featured at our new Cartolina Etsy Store. You have no idea how helpful that was to me. There are clear winners in those prints - especially the ladies/skirts/legs series - which makes me happy because when you see those up close and in detail you are going to love them. I think I might actually make one of those skirt images into our next business card.

As promised, I made a quick draw to choose 2 winners out of the 77 entries and the 2 lucky ladies are Kelly Lautenbach and Nantucket Mermaid. You gals can pick out your fave 11 x 17 print from our store(as soon as I get it organized) and I will send it off to you as your prize. Thank you for entering and for leaving your feedback :-)

I also want to say thanks to all of your who downloaded the new Cartograms and the latest version of the Cartolina iPhone app. Grace at Design*Sponge gave us a wonderful write up on Friday which catapulted us up to the #5 position at the app store in our category over the weekend. We are extremely grateful to all of you and sincerely hope you enjoy using the app as much as we do. Thank you :-)

Help, please :-)

So, as I have mentioned a few times here recently, I am going to open an Etsy shop to sell Cartolina Art Prints. I get so many emails and calls from people interested in buying prints so I think it's a fun idea. The trouble I am having though is trying to figure out which of our images would work best as framed art. I'm hoping you can help me :-)

I have formatted the images that I know are the most popular onto 11 x 17 sheets for printing. I am having them professionally printed at our printers in Vancouver. So they will be a lovely quality with lots of brilliant vintage details. I'd like to start with 12 prints in the shop and then add to the collection over time.

I've prepared 20 and we

need to whittle it down to 12 - that's where you come in . . . . I'd love to know which ones you would consider buying or which ones you think will be the most popular. Some will be great for a kids room, some are more conservative - hopefully there's something for everyone! Please can you take a minute and let me know what you think - even if you just list your top 4 or 5 favourites. Leave your comments and I'll pick a couple of names from the list to win a free print when I get them printed next week! And if you think I've missed any obvious ones just let me know! Thank you so much - what would I do without you :-)

As you can see above, most of the art prints will have a natural vintage edge so that they can be framed with a small white release (which means you don't need to mat them) or you can mat them right over the edge for a clean look.

I can't remember if I told you all ready but one of the things I have up my sleeve for this year is to reconnect with some of the wonderful people who buy our Cartolina products. Because we are wholesalers we tend not to talk to the end consumer very often and I kind of miss chatting to the people who actually buy our stuff in the stores. So as part of my reconnecting plan we are going to have a super fun market stall in our local market and hopefully travel to some of the other Pacific Northwest markets - to meet some people and have some fun weekend road trips - can't wait!

We are also going to open an Etsy store to sell some exclusive Cartolina products including some limited edition art prints - to frame for your walls. I'm really excited about this! I get asked all the time for frame-able versions of our designs and finally we are going to do it! probably in the next 2 weeks!

I was talking to a friend of mine who is a very successful Etsy seller and she reminded me to use watermarks on our images when we post them in our shop. I know that I should, but I think it's such a shame :-(

Today I just wanted to touch base with you about the problem of 'right click copiers'. I know that lots of you have had to deal with this problem online but, if you haven't, a 'right click copier' is someone who doesn't understand the implications of using copyrighted imagery without permission and randomly swipes other people images online and uses them to create art and crafts that they sell commercially either on Etsy or another e-commerce site. I recently had this happen here at the Cafe when an artist, who I had featured here a couple of times, started swiping images from other posts here and using the imagery in her jewelry - fortunately I noticed and put a stop to it - but I was horrified!

There are lots of legal sources to acquire the rights to use beautiful vintage imagery. Artists and crafts people should familiarize themselves with the process and the copyright laws so that they are confident that the images they are using are legal. It's a shame that a few people have to ruin it for everyone else. Have you had this problem - how did you deal with it?

I'm looking forward to opening our Cartolina Etsy shop but I probably will have to put big watermarks on the sample images - sorry! This week I would love you all to help me pick which designs we will produce as art prints. They will be printed professionally. They'll be 11 x 17 and I think you'll love them! So I'll put the selection together tomorrow or the next day and I hope together we can come up with a great collection!

P.S. A good piece of advice when you are using vintage imagery or anything that's rare, but in the public domain, is to restore the image and make a few obvious changes to the image so you recognize it as your work. That's what we do - do you have any tricks? :-)

Reconnecting in 2011

One of the things that is getting me through our rather dreary winter here in BC is my big plans for our Cartolina market stall this summer. You may or may not know that at Cartolina we only sell to wholesale accounts - and because we work with distributors we only deal with a handful of buyers around the world(and then they take it from there.)

So I've decided that in 2011 I am going to reconnect with our end consumers - that would be you and your friends who buy our products in the shops. We are planning an awesome market tent for our local market(and beyond) and also we are planning to introduce a few new products that we will sell exclusively in our Cartolina Etsy shop. I love Etsy and purchase lots of great stuff from amazing shops.

I really want us to be involved in selling Cartolina in a more grass roots way. I'm thrilled that some of the most beautiful stores in the world carry Cartolina but to get out of the studio and connect with people, one on one, is my goal this year. It's all about balance - right?

I saw this vintage hanger on Etsy yesterday and it fits right in with my vintage design plans for the Cartolina market tent. By the time I had got my act together it was all ready sold but I'm on a mission to collect the coolest display props - stay tuned!