New at Cartolina!

Well it's that time of the year again - time for new Cartolina Cards! Our latest collection is so pretty, I'm super excited. The buyers are loving them and I think we may have a couple of best sellers on our hands! As you know, I'm always on the lookout for beautiful vintage imagery to incorporate into our designs - I license pretty, antique illustrations from a variety of art dealers but I've also been interested, in the last year, to find a collage artist to work with at Cartolina - someone that can collaborate with me, that has a similar aesthetic and sense of design. I get a lot of portfolios sent my way, but I'm pretty picky! So, long story short, when I saw April Meeker's work I really hoped that we would have an opportunity to work together. So April has worked with me on this little collection and I think it turned out GREAT! A collaboration really is a meeting of minds and I thoroughly enjoyed working with April's collages and concepts - together we turned her ideas into 3 really great cards - the circus gal on the horse, the fabulous sailing ship and the pretty little hot air balloon. So we have 6 new Cartolina Cards - and I think we should have a giveaway next week - what do you think?

Hello everyone - welcome back for a whole new year at Cafe Cartolina! I'm excited. This time last year I was making big changes at Cartolina. I knew it would be a big scary year as we tackled a whole new distribution model, selling cards to buyers in more places around the world than I ever would have expected. I love that Cartolina has found such appreciation in the UK, Europe, Australia and New Zealand - and I am so grateful to everyone who has made that happen in the last 12 months. So let's say hello to a whole new year - it's looking pretty good so far!

Found - vintage, galvanized wire card spinner

Okay so some of you may wonder how a person could get so excited over a vintage wire postcard spinner. Well to a card maker and postcard collector like me this is the bee's knees. I've had my eye on this for so long in the local antique store. I keep asking the guy when he's going to sell it to me. So on Saturday, he flagged me down on Baker St and told me I could have that card spinner I'd been coveting for so long - yes, that's right - he just gave it to me. Some people are so kind and generous - I luv it! And it even came with a few old cards!

Can you see, it even has a little clip on the top to put a business card.

Cartolina - Collection 10

Every so often I feature my own stuff here at The Cafe! So today I'd like to introduce you to Cartolina Collection 10. This collection is in response to Collection IX which has been very popular since we launched it in May(you can see it here, here and here!)

One of the next buying seasons in the stationery industry is Valentines so we have a couple of new lovey dovey cards - one of which features our always popular bunny that Doug illustrates for us. And also we have 4 new blank cards - a fabulous bunch of flowers which will be a best seller I'm sure because it covers so many occasions - and 3 blank cards featuring the amazing french dresses worn by les trés belle femmes of Collection IX (and also featured on notebook number 9.) I think that the 3 dresses would look wonderful framed in a powder room, don't you?

If you'd like to be a Cartolina Insider and hear about all our new product, hot off the press, just leave your email address in the field under the pictures of me(top right of this page.) You'll be first to see what's new - including our top secret project that we can reveal in a couple of weeks. In the mean time, enjoy Collection 10. . . . . . . .

The pretty silk flowers in this shoot are my new favourite accessories - I pin them on everything! They are all from Sparrow Blu on Etsy (except for the fab red one which was a gift from Fancy Linda!)

Happy Sunday!

Hello everyone! Just wanted to remind you if you're going to trade shows this weekend(tis the season) stop by and check out all our new Cartolina goodies at The CGTA Show in Toronto - Booth 11257. And in Melbourne you can find us at The Reed Gift Fair, Melbourne Exhibition Centre, Booth 5516 right through til Wednesday!

This gorgeous summery image is from a stunning collection available for purchase at AbbyTrysAgain

Vintage cigarette cards

Kate from Coquette and Dove wrote to tell me about these cigarette cards that she had seen at Miss Moss - and she knew I would love them. They are from a series of 'how to' cards: How to draw a duck without lifting your pencil. How to suck a splinter out of your hand with a jam jar. All the way down to 'how to hold small animals'. All extremely useful things to know(check here for the other explanations). Even better I found 2 great new blogs - Coquette and Dove and Miss Moss.

Cartolina French Collection

A few months ago I redesigned some of our best selling cards for the French and French Canadian market. I worked with a translator and we produced a collection of almost 2 dozen french language cards. I'm pleased that they are selling well and that we have found an audience in Québec (and also France, Belgium and Switzerland.) For a list of stores selling our french cards email me and I'll put one together for you :-)

Cartolina at the Calgary Folk Festival

We're excited that, once again this year, Tracy and Cathy will be offering our Cartolina goods in Nelson's own, super cool Very Hush Hush travelling Airstream gallery at The Calgary Folk Fest July 22nd to 25th at Princes Island Park in Calgary. So if you're heading down to the festival be sure and stop by and say hi!

Cartolina online sales

Just wanted to remind you that if you are looking to buy a few individual Cartolina cards, notebooks, pocket mirrors etc online you can do that at Modern Paper Goods website. They are our exclusive online retailer in the US and we work closely with them to make sure they are always up to date with all the new product. They have wonderful customer service - they'll even hand write a card for you, stick a stamp on it and march it down to the mail box for you! No excuses for missing another birthday!

Inspiration- press sheets

This is kind of interesting - at least I think it is! This is an uncut Cartolina press sheet from our printers. We don't get to see these very often because they get sliced up and sent to us as individual cards but my guy at the printers thought I might like a few of them. I can't wait to dry mount one of these and hang it on the studio wall. It's quite large, 50" x 30" - holds 16 cards. I had a friend over to the studio at the weekend and she snapped one up - not sure what she'll use it for - maybe she'll hang it on her wall too! If you have other great ideas - let me know below . . .

Changes

I've made a few small changes around here in the last few days. I've had a nice quiet week so I have updated our web site with some new images, changed a few things around here on the blog and spent 10 minutes making a little Cartolina iPhone icon. I thought you might like to make one for your own sites so the directions are below.

iPhone Home Screen Icons

Did you know that when you're checking out one of your fave sites on your iPhone that you have the choice to ADD BOOKMARK or ADD TO HOME SCREEN. So yesterday I figured out how to make a little icon that will appear on my iPhone home screen as a short cut to our site - see the little elephant, bottom right next to NYTimes? (Just ignore the fact that I have 193 unread emails!) here's how you do it. Make a little icon 45 x 45 pixels. Name it apple-touch-icon.png and add it to the root directory of your website. When it loads on your iPhone it will have nice round corners and the 'wet look'. Voila!

Cartolina News!

Well, if you have been following along, you will know that we are off to New York again for the Stationery Show today. It's been a busy busy time here - I am constantly amazed at how fast we have grown in such a short time. I'm excited today to let my friends down-under know that, as of June, all our products are going to be available in beautiful stores across Australia including select David Jones stores. This is something that I have been working on for some time now and I am thrilled that it has finally come together.

The response to our new collection has been overwhelmingly positive and I am so grateful to those of you who wrote to tell me how much they liked the new designs - very heartwarming. So many of the readers here at the Cafe are fabulously talented and creative - it's always a bit daunting to debut a new collection here!!

So I have a little surprise for you today - Jennifer at Modern Paper Goods is offering a great promo to any of our readers who purchase Cartolina products for the next week - 50% off shipping! She has all the new product available including the notebooks and pocket mirrors. All you have to do is enter the promo code SHIP50 when you checkout - offer is available until the 21st. Thanks Jen!

I'll be back here in our neck of the woods on Friday the 21st - hope to do some blogging from New York in the next few days - so stay tuned - and have a great weekend.