Rainbow Connection: Tulips bring Spring!
Tulips form a genus of spring-blooming perennial herbaceous bulbiferous geophytes. The flowers are usually large, showy and brightly coloured, generally red, pink, yellow, or white. They often have a different coloured blotch at the base of the tepals, internally.
The meaning of tulips is generally perfect love . Like many flowers, different colors of tulips also often carry their own significance. Red tulips are most strongly associated with true love, while purple symbolizes royalty.
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Nuts and Bolts: Give Your Low to No Sellers a Facelift
GCU Community Manager
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Wanted New Cards: Beddian and Golden Birthdays
Similarly there are Golden or Champagne birthdays which is turning the same age as the numeric day of your birthday. So if you were born on the 12th, it’s the year you turn 12. You only have one golden birthday as well.
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Freebie Wednesday: Dividers and Leaves Graphics
Freebie Wednesday:
Dividers and Leaves Graphics – use these hand drawn elements to highlight text, and to create attractive die cuts and stationary. It’s free at Creative Fabrica for another 2 days so you better make sure you don’t miss out!
This product comes with a complete commercial license.
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Rainbow Connection: Blue is The Coolest Color
Blue is the coolest color – the color of the sky, ocean, sleep, twilight. The ancient Egyptians used lapis lazuli to represent heaven. Blue symbolizes the Virgin Mary. A pure blue is the color of inspiration, sincerity and spirituality. Blue is often the chosen color by conservative people. Blue is the calming color. That makes it a wonderful color to use in the home, especially for babies. Blue is so soothing that is a good choice for pajamas. Dark blue is the color of truth and moderation. A blue iris means your friendship is very important to me. Wednesday’s color is blue. Blue gemstones to wear to feel calm are blue sapphire and blue topaz. Lapis lazuli and azurite are said to heighten psychic power.
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Nuts and Bolts: Artist Interview Stacia Gorge.
Here is October 2018 Design Challenge winner’s, Stacia Gorge of Good Things by Gorge, interview.
Note: Read about the other rewards and the two new rewards for 2019, in addition to bragging rights, of being a Design Challenge winner.
GCU Community Manager
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Wanted New Cards: Joyeuses Fêtes.
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Freebie Wednesday: Falling Star Font Duo.
Freebie Wednesday:
Falling Star Duo Font is a script font stunning and comprehensive font duo, perfect for giving your projects a branded but friendly feel and it’s free at Creative Fabrica for another 5 days so you better make sure you don’t miss out!
This product comes with a complete commercial license.
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Rainbow Connection: Moodboards II
Find inspiration by browsing through these lovely moodboards at Seed; inspired by Design Seeds Color Palletes.
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Dash of Inspiration: April 2019 Design Challenge
Thank you all for your kind thoughts last month. As the judges get ready to vote on the March entries, we’ll take off with April’s Design Challenge …
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Theme: Graduation Season
Requirements:
- Create a brand new design, within these categories. There are many sub-categories with 10 or less cards. Choose any one of these: Grad / Graduate School – Associate Degree – Trade / Vocational / Career School and Medical / Healthcare
- Write your own verse/message, be creative and write a message that clearly speaks to your imagery, occasion and recipient.
- Blank verse will not be considered for entry in this challenge.
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Entry Deadline: Tuesday, April 30th
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How to Enter: Post the PID (card number) and the URL (public storefront link – please WAIT for the card to be available in the public marketplace, please DO NOT post a link to your Manage Cards area) as a post in the challenge blog. We’ll forward your entry to the jury.
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Category:
- Any sub-category with LESS THAN 10 CARDS from these choices:
- Grad / Graduate School
- Associate Degree
- Trade / Vocational / Career School
- Medical / Healthcare
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Rules:
- Submission must meet GCU’s Submission Guidelines and be Approved through the usual Review Cycle– Fast Track your submission with this in the Notes to Reviewer: April Design Challenge Submission here is the link to the blog post: (include THIS blog post URL)
- Only ONE card per artist per challenge.
- Submissions must be NEW, no existing designs.
- Your entry must meet the Challenge Requirements and Theme or it will not be included in the challenge.
- Stock Card Creations entries will not be accepted.
- Your designs should differ from those already offered in the category of your choice to offer shoppers a variety of choices, not more of the same.
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BLIND Judging: We hope each of you enters every month. Entries are submitted anonymously for judging by the GCU Challenge Jury which means that before and during the challenge, judges do not have any way of knowing what artist is behind each entry. This eliminates any and all concerns with ‘favoritism’. Results will post on the Community Blog. The jury will judge the entries on the following criteria:
- How well the card meets the Challenge Requirements and Theme.
- How well the card speaks to the Category the artist chooses for the card submission.
- Creativity, Execution and Marketability.
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Winners: 1st Place:
- The winning designer’s card and store will be featured on the GCU Public Blog – the blog which customers view and follow.
- As well as featured on the GCU Public Facebook Page – over 57,000 followers, now THAT’S exposure!
- The winning card will be Design of the Day following the announcement of the winners (within 48-hours).
EXCEPTION: Horizontal (landscape) cards may not be featured as DOD due to GCU Home Page space restrictions. In these cases, GCU will choose a different vertically oriented card from your store to feature as DOD. Thank you for your understanding and apologies for this limitation.
- The winning card will be added to the Greeting Card Universe Design Challenge Winners Pinterest Board – currently GCU’s Pinterest Page followers: 4K!
- The winning card, should the artist choose, may be referenced in a new series by the winning artist and he/she may Fast Track all cards in the new series (being sure to give the Challenge URL and winning card PID in your Notes to Reviewer for each card in this series).
- Winning card will be included in a marketing email to over 100,000 customers!
- GCU will create a Meet the Team board for the winning artist under the Pinterest GCU account where the winning artist will be able to pin and promote her own storefront and all that makes them a unique card designer and one of GCU’s artistic community team member.
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Winning card will be posted on GCU’s Instagram with 6,800 followers and counting!
- GCU will create a Meet the Team board for the winning artist under the Pinterest GCU account where the winning artist will be able to pin and promote her own storefront and all that makes them a unique card designer and one of GCU’s artistic community team member.
- NEW! – 10 free greeting card credits added to your GCU account. Apply them at checkout and they never expire.
- NEW! – A Design Challenge GCU digital award!
2nd Place:
- Your submission will be Design of the Day the following week of announcing the Challenge winners (within 7-days).
EXCEPTION: Horizontal (landscape) cards may not be featured as DOD due to GCU Home Page space restrictions. In these cases, GCU will choose a different vertically oriented card from your store to feature as DOD. Thank you for your understanding and apologies for this limitation.
- Your card will be added to the Greeting Card Universe Design Challenge Winners Pinterest Board.
- Winning card will be included in a marketing email to over 100,000 customers!
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Winning card will be posted on GCU’s Instagram with 6,800 followers and counting!
- NEW! – 5 free greeting card credits added to your GCU account. Apply them at checkout and they never expire.
- NEW! – A Design Challenge GCU digital award!
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Tips:
Check out these tips, tricks, freebies, and tutorials from our own GCU Community Blog Artist Resources which might be helpful in this month’s Challenge.
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Be inspired to create and learn something new!
GCU Community 