Very early in September I started drawing my next range of greeting cards, which would include some Christmas cards and also some drawn of the Supreme Court of Victoria and its architectural features. In hindsight I should have started a lot earlier as I have felt a bit of pressure to get these done to be ready for the Christmas season.
I am going to take you on the journey from an idea sketch to the printed card that can be purchased in stores. I am using my Koala and Gumnut Blossoms as an example.
After deciding to draw Australian animals on Christmas card I had the ‘lightbulb’ moment of including red and green in the gumnut blossoms. The design grew from there,
I decided on five new cards and had the final drawings completed in watercolour pencil on A4 watercolour paper by the end of September.
At the same time I reordered some of my previous card designs as stocks were getting low and Christmas is coming up and I have a stall at a big market at Etsy Made Local Melbourne in late November. Before sending my order to the local printing company for my new designs to be scanned and cards printed , I had to decide how many to print of each. I was very fortunate to have two of local stockists Law Institute of Victoria bookshop and Paperpoint stationery preorder 10 of some of my cards, including the Christmas koala and possum. I decided on 70 of each . Altogether I ordered 500 cards.
I dropped my originals off to the printer on 25 September and received the cards on 18 October. The timeframe was so long because I had received one set of hardcopy proofs to approve but I wanted to change the colour balance on some of them. I was then sent another set of hardcopy proofs which I approved . Hence the delay.
In the meantime I ordered 500 envelopes from my usual local stationery store and 500 cello bags to put each card in.
Saturday afternoon on my lounge chair’
Top Row : cello bags, cards, envelopes
Bottom Row: cards in cello bags with envelopes, strips from cello bags .
(hint learned from google searching. Put stickytape sticky side up on put cello strips on this. Otherwise they are full of static and stick to everything and anything . This keeps them in one place. )
They took all afternoon to package. But it was a nice way to occupy a chilly Melbourne Saturday afternoon.
Today, Sunday, I took some very basic photographs so that I could put my greeting cards for sale on my Etsy online store. This also involves writing descriptions and choosing keyword tags. I will need to take better photographs to showcase the cards. But the aim today was just to get them up online.
