Two new everyday greeting cards for the Gabriella Buckingham range

A short post this one. I did promise myself that I would do some designing yesterday and I’d written the words for these designs months ago.

I am  pleased with the simplicity of one of them and the intricacy of the other. I hand drew the border for the one below with a dip pen before colouring the design in on the ‘puter.

In addition I have also finally realised how to make sure that for some designs I can print to the edge! I was trying desperately to configure my Canon printer to print without a white border. A few months ago I ‘won’ a great German guillotine in an ebay auction and I am simply carefully cutting individual cards down from 150 mm to 12.5mm. Genius eh. Takes me a Of course I have to be very careful with the lining up but a  little thing like this is a bit of a breakthrough!  I produce everything I make myself and knowing I can now do this makes me very happy. Of course as my business grows I will need to find a very good printer to replicate what I do but until then – sorted!

If you can recommend a good printer of short digital runs in Norfolk, Suffolk, Lincs or Cambridgeshire please let me know.

Both these cards will be available on Etsy shortly.

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Breaking the blog lock with a giveaway . . .#nationalstationeryweek read down to the bottom ;

It’s been over a month since I have blogged. I feel like I am at an AA meeting… only it’s a BB one.

I’ve had much on my plate as I have been taking a course on Illustrator with Nicoles classes, had a fair amount of work to do, a bit of a social life with friends to stay and actually going to a dinner party!! as well as adding and revamping my Etsy shop GabriellaBuckingham. Alongside family life. Am I making too many excuses?

There’s also a burgeoning idea I have which I am mulling over  and aim to use the last week of the illustrator class to do the graphics for  the simple packaging it will involve. Then I will have to do the hard bit: costings and market research.

During the course of adding finalised designs and some original canvases to my Etsy shop I had to ask myself a lot of questions about positioning, scale of image – all the usual things when you’re designing. It was very helpful to place some designs onto my Facebook page and ask for opinions. As a result of all the printing out and reconsidering I have a lot of cards that aren’t quite there but are still lovely.. some only have round corners where I then decided squared off would be better.

G I V E A W A Y !

As a thank you for all your help I am going to give away some sets of cards, a mixture of final designs and the ones that didn’t make the cut..( of my chomper!) or did but shouldn’t have. All you have to do is : visit my Etsy shop, look at both pages and tell me which are your favourite two cards of the whole selection (there are several different looks) and which is your favourite canvas – if any! Then either go to my Facebook page, (like it if you do but this isn’t essential) and leave your answers under the post I will be doing shortly about this competition or come back here and comment here instead. I will choose 4 winners (2 from the Facebook page, 2 from here) in two weeks time to send a bundle of cards which will include at least one of your favourites. Easy! Really look forward to hearing your thoughts. All comments welcome.

 

Doodles and fun inspired by Lilla Rogers new book

I ordered Lilla Rogers new book before Christmas and it arrived this week – yipee! It’s just what I needed to spur me on. It’s uplifting, lighthearted, motivating, to the point and practical without being heavy going. Visually it’s a delight of course and its FUN. Something I need 🙂 I particularly love the tiny tarot at the end which I’ve already made my own version of and put in a pot I made at ceramics class years ago!

I carved out some time for myself not doing my hand painted orders (you do need a break sometimes!) to play. Ages ago I’d painted a yellow background on wood and a few coloured circles. I saw it lying on the side in the studio and decided to play with it adding more to it.

This led to designing a card for a friend with it.. and then I did another and put it in my Etsy shop inkpaintpaper.

Next I painted a couple of small background patterns, sketched a rabbit baby and designed some new baby cards.

One set large and personalisable (available at Moobaacluck on Notonthehighstreet.com) the other two are smaller simply with “It’s a girl!” and “It’s a boy!” on the front. Find them in my Etsy shop too.

Hope you like them! And thank you Lilla 🙂