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?

Vintage illustration

I couldn't resist this great little illustration of Puss in Boots. What a fab little outfit he's wearing! From here.

Vintage ephemera

Doug bought this magazine - purely for the cover - on Saturday. It's the prettiest little illustration and I absolutely love the gesture of the little guy with the lasso. Having seen lots of old photos of Doug when he was a kid I know that he spent hours and hours practicing his roping on the farm with his dad. So, I'm sure that's another reason he bought this mag. The illustrator is well known American illustrator John Clymer.

Auction - Wonder World globe

I picked up this vintage Wonder World globe at the auction. I think it's 1946. It's one of the prettiest globes I've ever seen with wonderful illustrations and graphics.

Dana Tanamachi's chalk boards

I'm still have trouble with the Blogger meltdown - Blogger seems to be slowing down so much in the evening making it really difficult to publish posts - hopefully they'll get it sorted out soon - noticed I lost a lot of pictures and comments too! Oh well - onward and upward!

My friend Fiona sent me a link to Dana Tanamachi's website - with these wonderful, hand lettered chalk boards. I just knew you would love these. So beautifully designed and crafted. It takes a lot of skill to work in such a large format and such delicate medium as chalk - I'm so impressed - you?

Mystery chinoiserie

I can't remember where I got this gorgeous image but, even with the risk of the newly appointed blog police coming round to arrest me, I'm posting it here for you all to admire(and if you know where it came from you can let me know!)

And the winner is . .

Congratulations to Doug today - his illustration(below) was selected out of 7000 entries to be featured in the American Illustration Annual, 30th anniversary edition. This is a juried annual with stiff competition and I'm very proud of him :-).

This illustration was for Bicycling Magazine.

Vintage inspired illustration

From what I can tell these are illustrated by Tom Frost. I think they're lovely and so reminiscent of the vintage matchbox labels that I've collected for years. You can see more of Tom's work(and buy some too) at The Boy Frost.

The golden ticket

These people at Crank Bunny are so clever. I've featured one of their handmade cards before. They are so beautifully designed and so unique. This one has a gold leaf scratch off panel on the inside that you can personalize - which is amazing. Check out their other amazing designs.

Folk toy prints for sale

I know we have seen some of these illustrations make the rounds on the blogs in the past - I think most of them were from a Flickr collection. These are actually FOR SALE! Etsy seller King Paper is selling the individual prints for $10/pair. These pieces are from the book Folk Toys - Les Jouets Populaires, illustrated by Emanuel Hercik, 60 years ago. They really would be fabulous framed on the wall. here are some of my faourites.

Doug's new illustrations

Doug has been working on some very cool illustrations recently. I specifically love this piece that he did for the Wall Street Journal. Doug's been illustrating for a long time now with clients that include the New York Times, Washington Post and LA Times. Very cool. You can see more of his new work on his site which I updated for him yesterday :-)

Found - Annie Smits illustrations

I wanted to share this holiday card with you that I got from Helen our New Zealand distributor. This card is from a line of cards she carries that reflects New Zealand heritage and culture. I love that this angel has the simple and exotic 'tribal' decoration that you might find in Maori art. Illustrated by Annie Smits.

Illustration by Annie Smits

Found - vintage record collections

I also picked up these vintage record collections this weekend - specifically for the illustrated covers. Beauitful, stylized illustrations from the 1950s, I would think.