Mary Richmond Design

My Wholesale Cape Cod Card Catalog is Done!

Woohoooo! This has been a long time coming and there's still plenty of room for improvement but it's complete and ready to use. Today it had its very first outing and the store manager was very pleased with the presentation and the ease of use so I feel like I passed my first test. I put everything, including actual samples of the cards and envelopes in a folder that has all my contact info on both the inside and outside (the one shown doesn't have it's stickers yet.)

I have so much to learn in Photoshop and now I have to figure out how to take individually saved pages and convert them to one PDF file that can eventually be downloaded off my website.....but in the meantime I have all my pictures labeled and all the cards listed on price sheets, etc. I have ordering info, a table of contents and over a hundred cards listed for sale.

I have 3 pages of different birds, a full page of beach landscapes, a page of shells and mermaids, a page of bunnies and other pets and a page full of flowers so far.

Feel free to comment. I'm always open to ideas that will help me improve what I'm doing. I'm also looking for outlets to sell my cards in anywhere along the northeastern coast. 

Thinking About Mother's Day Cards Yet?

I have pretty much turned my Mary Richmond Design Etsy Shop into one big card shop and right now I'm having a blast selling my Mother's Day Cards.

These are some of the designs I've sold in the last few days and there's still plenty of time to order some and receive them on time. I mail the day after I get payment and sometimes on the same day if the order comes in before I get to the post office.

Finally....my Valentine's Day cards!

I know that many online shops have had their Valentine's Day cards up for weeks now but I'm a little slow about these things. I plan to add more over the week but here are the first three designs. You can find them for sale here.

 

 

More Halloween Cards

What does one do on a rainy gray afternoon when one should be cleaning house, firing tiles, doing laundry and heaven's knows how many other things?

Why draw and paint fun little Halloween card designs, of course!

I've had these ideas rolling around in my head for awhile and today seemed a good day to draw them.

You'll see I corrected the error on the little ghostie card. You can still comment and be included in the drawing. Everyone got it right so we'll just have fun doing the drawing tomorrow.

Did you notice I added color to the little stockings and shoes, too?

i also did this drawing of these silly spiders dropping in to say hello.....

I've added all these to my shop here. I've added a new banner to both shops and would love your thoughts on those, too.

And last but not least, I added this framed tile panel to my Etsy tile shop. You can see more new tiles here.

As you can probably see, I'm having trouble with the focus on my camera with these close ups. I don't know if I'm moving my hand or what. Tomorrow I will probably reshoot them outside if the weather improves. Part of the trouble may be they were done inside by a window instead of outdoors in total natural light? I haven't a clue.

Any photo suggestions are always glady taken. I use a Sony cybershot and put it on macro and zoom in from a distance. It usually works better than this....or I usually work better than this!

New Cards

These are my new Halloween cards. I did them for fun while taking a break during some pretty intense work over the last few days. I've been working on finishing a huge drawing for a client (36 x 36") and finalizing a grant application that was due this afternoon. The drawing is in the mail and the application and its 16 copies are at the funder's office in their appropriate folders and envelopes.

There's a grammatical error on these cards. Let me know in the comments what the error is and on Sunday I will draw from the names of those that were correct. The winner will receive a set of 6 Halloween cards, including the pumpkin and owl cards that are in my shop here.

If you don't want Halloween cards you can choose 6 fall themed cards.

Mother's Day Cards listed on Etsy

Here are some of my cards made up for Mother's Day!

Today is the 7 year anniversary of losing my own mom so it was fun to do this while thinking of her. She was always my biggest fan, even when she was suggesting how something could be done differently or better. She always thought I could do anything. Moms are good like that.

Anyway, hop on over to my Etsy Shop if you would like to order some cards. There are still some prints to benefit breast cancer research left, too.

There are messages inside each card...

In the Studio with Valentines and Sculptures

These are the first stages of the little portrait heads I've been working on. I am not thrilled with them and as I looked at them today I realized they should be more fun, simpler, gentler. I thought back to the conversation I had with the dad who commissioned them and he just wanted fun little pieces for his wife, not serious sculptures. Here I've been working hard at likenesses and am not satisfied with the results. Each has a resemblance, however, and tomorrow I think I will relax and just play with that and see what happens. These have to be ready for Wednesday so tomorrow is the last day I'll have to work on them. I feel confident that I'll be able to do what I want and need to do with them in that amount of time. I definitely did not charge this guy enough, by the way....I basically charged him for an hour's studio time on each and have already spent about triple that. Oh well, learning curves for me seem to be long and winding with many blind and slippery spots.

Tonight I put together little packages that I will give out to the merchants and office staff here at Mashpee Commons for Valentine's Day. I didn't do holiday gifts this year so am handing these out instead. Each little package has a postcard, a Valentine card and envelope and some little candies. The card on the outside says it's a gift from Mary Richmond Design.

First, I did some with these little bunnies....the inside says "Some bunny loves you....Happy Valentine's Day. Ok, a little corny, but hey, isn't that what Valentine's Day is supposed to be about?

And there are these little buddies, too. Inside these cards say "Friends like you are among life's greatest gifts....Happy Valentine's Day"

I'm hoping it makes a nice little gift and that it has a light but effective touch of marketing, too. Most of all I hope they make the recipients smile. Everything in the news is so heavy these days that I figure everyone can use a little smile, even if it's only for a moment.

If nothing else, it makes me feel very festive and ready for Valentine's Day myself with all this card making, candy sorting and gift wrapping! What are you doing?

Valentines, Roots & Shoots and More

Last night our Roots & Shoots group met to make Valentines to take to the nursing home the girls have "adopted". Each month they go and visit with the residents there, bringing snacks, singing songs with them, telling stories, bringing cards or little gifts.

Each Roots & Shoots group is different. Our group is all girls, which in itself is different and they have taken on several long term projects. The Jane Goodall Institute, which is the mother organization for all Roots & Shoots groups worldwide asks that each group work on a humanitarian project, an animal project and a community ecological project. Many groups work with international goals in mind. Our group seems to choose smaller, homier projects that have a direct impact within our own community.

These are some of the cards the girls completed last night. They also planned their little program of songs and committed to a program to help reduce the use of paper and plastic bags in their own homes and in their extended families and school classrooms. These are small things, perhaps, but if all children and their families committed to such small things on a regular basis, perhaps large changes would occur....

Paintings and Valentines

A morning spent with students, drawing and painting flowers....I really like drawing flowers but I'm not a big fan of painting them. I don't know why that is. I love painting gardens, so go figure....

These are some little designs I'm working on for Valentine's Day. I always send lots of cards for Valentine's Day and like to have some for sale in the shop, too.

I played with my colored pencils this afternoon, always a fun way to spend some time.

Here's a close up of two little buddies....

In Lieu of Christmas Cards....

This year is the first year I didn't get my Christmas cards out on time....so this year will be the first year I'll be sending New Year's cards. If you know me you know this is somewhat traumatic for me but I'll just have to get over it, huh? Too, too busy....and I've painted lots of little pet ornaments so it's really ok. The woman from the MSPCA comes to pick up the $1000 I've raised so far tomorrow morning!