What does the beginning of spring mean to you?  To me it means getting to ride my bike after all the snow melts and the start of the baseball season!  To celebrate, I’ve made two new card designs for spring and put them up on the Etsy site.  The cards are comprised of original drawings and photographs scanned into the computer, and then designed and colored in Photoshop.  They are inkjet printed onto luxurious bright white cotton cards that are scored with a unique landscape fold.  I’ve paired both designs with an A6-sized red envelope.

I’ve spent the last week developing a series of greeting postcards to sell on the Etsy site.  All four postcards in the series are hand-drawn, scanned into the computer, and colored in Photoshop.  I then inkjet printed them onto quartz-colored Stardream cardstock, which is A2 size and has rounded corners.  They all represent scenic landscapes and convey commonly used greetings.  Since Stardream cardstock doesn’t like to absorb a lot of ink, I played around with different textures on each print to eliminate any large expanses of solid color.  I’m very happy with the way the textures work together in each design.  They are listed for sale individually and in a four-pack.

I love sending and receiving postcards, and at 28¢ for postage, it’s almost as cheap as an email!

I worked on the business card design yesterday and am very happy with the result.  I want to print on bright white paper, but I still need to select which one.  I’m in love with Stardream in the Crystal color, but the ink was smudging pretty badly an hour after I printed it.  It might be a matter of letting it dry for longer, so I printed one yesterday and will be testing it later today.  If not Stardream, a nice thick cotton paper would be very lovely.

Our older cat’s name is Monkey.  When she is being playful and about to attack something, she makes this awesomely cute face where her pupils get really big and her ears flatten to the sides.  Manny and I have always referred to this as her “Red Monkey Face”.  At nine years old, she still makes the Red Monkey Face when she’s thinking really hard about attacking stuff.  So, yes, I named my business after my cat, and, yes, that’s her in the logo.  I would have named my business for both my cats if the younger one wasn’t named after a copyrighted cartoon character.  There you have it.  Mystery revealed.