Tis the Season!

Merry Christmas, Season's Greetings or Happy Holidays - however you'd like to say it my friends! I wish you all the best for a wonderful weekend with family and friends. We'll be spending it with my parents this weekend - I hope you all enjoy yourselves and I'll see you back here on Tuesday. Much love, Fiona and Doug xoxoxo

Cartolina Collection XI

Hello everyone - sorry for my absence for the last couple of days - I definitely did not anticipate how busy we would be this week. But, I have it all under control, and after another super busy week next week we will be back on track - phew!

I would like to take this opportunity to introduce you to Cartolina Collection XI. Yay!

I'm very excited about these new designs. I am absolutely loving the new imagery and the bright colours for spring. These new cards will be in stores in the next few weeks . . . . .

This first card with the red birds was actually a request from our UK distributors - they asked for a design with bright colours and the word LOVE prominently displayed on the front - as signage for their trade show booth. But it turned out so nicely we turned it into a card. I know it's going to be a hit with the buyers because on the 1st day of release this week we sold 3/4 of the entire production run! That's never happened before!

The cards with the cakes are very exciting for me - I work with a few people around the world who source imagery for me and we looked high and low for these very rare prints. I only work with original antique prints so when my favourite image expert called to say she had managed to find originals I was thrilled. I hope you like them too.

The background on this poppy card is a 17th century, copperplate engraving that I bought from a dealer a long time ago. It's amazing how big that poppy grew when I planted it on that lawn!

This Horse Chestnut card is interesting to me because this tree is actually on the back of one of last year's cards. I got so many comments on that tree that it has been promoted to the front!

More Cakes - luv em!

A new feature that we have on all new cards(and reprints) this year is QR codes. A QR code is that tiny checker board icon that is popping up everywhere these days. Now some of you will know about QR codes but, if like me, they are a new feature for you, here's what Wikipedia says(better than I could):

"QR Codes storing addresses and URLs may appear in magazines, on signs, buses, business cards, or on just about any object about which users might need information. Users with a camera phone equipped with the correct reader applicationcan scan the image of the QR Code to display text, contact information, connect to a wireless network, or open a web page in the phone's browser."

So every card we print will have a QR code on the back. To scan the code you just need any smart phone and a scanner app like Quick Mark. Our codes, when scanned, could link to a multitude of things - depending on how we've set it up. This code, above, for instance, leads to our iPhone app page at the iTunes store. Other codes might lead to our website or our blog or a fun giveaway or a promo code! Each code is a fun surprise to enhance the experience of buying or receiving one of our cards! I hope you try it out some time :-)

If you are interested to know more about QR codes for your business this is a good video to watch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYDbFTai0iE&feature=player_embedded#!

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!)

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 :-)

Another Great Big Cartolina Giveaway!

As is the tradition around here, we have new product so we are having a new product giveaway! The prizes are fabulous - the 2 winners shall receive a full set of all our new goodies - cards, notebooks and pocket mirrors -yay! I love sharing the excitement every few months. So all you have to do is leave a comment at the bottom of the post - tell me who you'd most like to send one of our cards to. It could be your granny or it could be someone from history - anyone. I'll leave the giveaway open until Sunday at 4pm Pacific time. Now if, for some reason, you need to get your hands on some Cartolina loot before next week then you can always get yours right here from Modern Paper Goods - the whole collection at great prices and great service options.

One of the best things about designing and producing a product is that I can share it with friends :-)

And I'll have 2 winners on Monday morning for you :-) If you'd like to enter more than once you just need to blog or Tweet this post! Thanks for entering! Good luck!

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.

Shameless Self Promotion.

Yay, it's time to introduce you to Cartolina Collection IX. This collection is very special to me because I had a vision from the beginning and it took months to source all the imagery. Much of the images arrived damaged and torn so I had a lot of restoration to do before I could start designing. Many of the images are from the mid 1700s and are staggeringly beautiful. I was genuinely moved when I started working with each one. I think that the effort paid off and we have a great new collection of cards, notebooks and pocket mirrors! I hope you enjoy them too. All the new products are available as of Friday at Modern Paper Goods. Jennifer has posted a fun profile/interview avec moi just in time with today's reveal - you can read it here. Thank you Jennifer!

I'll split this post into 3 parts - cards, books and mirrors.

Here is a small selection of the new cards to start . . .

This is just a small sampling of the new cards - I will try and upload all the images later today to our Flickr account.