Promotion in Motion: Equine Sympathy Cards
GCU Artist Stephanie Laird was interviewed for an article in Equine Enthusiast web magazine to talk about her Equine Sympathy cards (look for the article on page 21).
Stephanie has an impressive line of 107 Equine Sympathy Cards in her GCU storefront at the moment.
“I have horses and my friends have horses and when they lose a horse it’s kind of hard to show support. So that’s when I started thinking that it would be a good niche business.”
There is a lot of free publicity out there for us greeting card artists. There are blogs, websites, publications, podcasts, you name it. The great thing is that these folks are always looking for new content. Another good thing for us is that our cards are visual and provide a high impact that way, so the interviewer not only gets an interview they get visual content as well.
For my specialty, equine sympathy cards, I try and target horse and veterinarian related websites, publications and blogs. You can start with an internet search on the cards that you want to showcase, say for example, wedding invitations. Just with a quick key word search “Wedding Blogs” I found this. There is usually contact information that you can submit your idea to, and sometimes they actually have a submission page.
It’s hard to put yourself out there, and don’t take it personally if they do not pick up your idea for an article about your cards. Art, is always subjective, and it depends on personal preference a lot of times. Just try another site. I had actually contacted the Equine Enthusiast publication with my idea of an article on my cards, months and months ago. I never heard back, however one of my cards was quoted in the New York Breeders Magazine (inside cover) and then I won a best of show in an art competition that the local paper reported on and only then was I asked for an interview. There is kind of a momentum that builds with this. I have two more interviews scheduled now that are a direct spin off of this publication. Just keep trying. I always think of it as a kind of game, that way it’s no biggie if they do not like my idea. Someone will!
For the interview itself, as you can tell by this interview, I am still working on this! Being an introvert by nature, interviews are a bit painful for me, however I love creating cards and it’s really fun to see your work being featured. I would say have an idea of what you would like to put out there or convey. It’s hard because you never know what the questions are going to be and sometimes they seem very irrelevant but I do feel the interviewer wants you to sound good too. And don’t worry about misquotes, I think that is just interview law.
So, if I can get publicity for something as unusual as equine sympathy cards, just think of what your niche greeting cards can do! There are publications just waiting to publish about you and your greeting cards!
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Dash of Inspiration: New Year’s Cards 2016
The Holiday Season is well on it’s way, so hurry and get those New Year’s cards updated for 2016! If your 2016 updated card is showing up in the below 2015 search, then you may not have updated all the necessary fields.
Remember when you make these updates to:
- Update your Card Title, Keywords and Artist Notes.
- Take the time to update your CUSTOM cards to the new year to increase their marketability.
- If you have Chinese New Year cards which DO NOT reflect the ‘year of the horse’, then update those as well.
If you want to sell your cards for the upcoming New Year season, then best get busy with those updates or your cards will be left behind. Let’s help GCU pull off a professional front when promoting our New Year’s cards by showing potential customer ONLY CURRENT cards.
AND … here’s a special reminder from the GCU Review Team and Mindy:
Chinese zodiac specific designs are the strongest selling Chinese New Year (CNY) cards on GCU. For this reason GCU will discriminate card and category approvals of Chinese New Year (CNY) cards. Only zodiac specific designs will be approved under the zodiac specific categories (ie: Holidays >> Chinese New Year >> Year of the Monkey, etc.). The front of the card must have zodiac specific image and / or text. Cards that are also year specific (ie: 2016) on the front or inside will be approved under the appropriate subcategory (ie: Holidays >> Chinese New Year >> Year of the Monkey >> Year Specific, etc.).
CNY cards that are NOT zodiac specific in the front design will be approved under the appropriate”genera” category. This includes many of the universal symbols of the holiday (bamboo, koi, tea, fruit, firecrackers, red envelopes, etc.). If the card has year specific content (ie: 2016) or the zodiac is addressed on the inside verse only these cards will be approved in Holidays >> Chinese New Year >> Year Specific.
Note: The Dragon is the only zodiac animal sign GCU will considered as a universal symbol of the holiday and permitted to be used outside of its zodiac year (Year of the Dragon).
Please note: GCU needs to maintain consistency of design to the pid#, it should reflect the same card over time so shoppers coming back for a specific card can find that design updated for the current year. Minor improvements and edits are acceptable and encouraged but major design changes will cause confusion for shoppers and may result in lost sales for repeat orders. Please update the YEAR showing on the card but the basic imagery and CATEGORY must remain the same. Example: a Year of the Ram card cannot be updated and moved to the Year of the Monkey category.
We encourage you to create new designs for the current year and simply update the year on the cards from years past. This expands your opportunity for sales, you will have the established design available for repeat orders and new designs will offer further opportunity.
Off you go to make updates, see you on the New Year’s 2016 pages!
JJBDesigns©
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Wanted: New Cards – Holidays – Kwanzaa – Family Relation Specific
There are still some categories that need cards. We’d like you to create at least one card for this category using the Stock Cards function (Bigstock).
Remember, when you’re submitting your new card, add a little note about the intended category in your Notes to Reviewers – cards submitted for underused categories are much more likely to be approved provided they follow the Submission Guidelines. Be inventive, be clever, be creative. Good luck!
Today’s categories that still need some cards are:
Holidays: Kwanzaa – For Family Relation Specific – Foster Family/Parents
Holidays: Kwanzaa – For Family Relation Specific – Future Son in Law
Holidays: Kwanzaa – For Family Relation Specific – Half Brother
Holidays: Kwanzaa – For Family Relation Specific – Half Sister
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Send a Birthday Card to Frankie by 11/8!
For interested artists let’s see how many birthday smiles we can send to this little boy who turns 6 in the hospital on November 13th!
Click here to read the article
Using GCU, send a card BY 11/8 addressed specifically as listed below:
Company Name: Barnet Times
First Name: Anna Slater
Last Name: Chief Reporter
Address: Observer House
Address (line 2): Caxton Way
City: Watford
State/Province: Hertfordshire
Zip/Postal Code: WD18 8RJ
Country: UK
If you earned a card credit from sending a card to little Ava, please be sure to apply it to your card when you’re in the cart. Postage is a little more $ in the UK but Frankie is worth it!
After, post on this thread on the GCU forum your order id# and GCU will “reimburse” you by adding a free card credit to your account for a future card purchase as a thank you!
Send one of your own cards, send a different artist’s card, make a custom card! Be sure to add a special & uplifting note on the inside to Frankie.
Let’s delight him with special cards from GCU’s talented & thoughtful community of artists!
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Dash of Inspiration: November Design Challenge
The winners of last month’s challenge, “Paint the Town … Red” will be announced mid-week and a HUGE THANK YOU to all for giving October’s Challenge a go and participating. We had a good turn out and many, many wonderful cards were created!
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This month, it’s time for romance and with Valentine’s Day coming in February, should you choose to design for this category choice, your cards will be done right on time for the customers purchasing in the ‘Month of Love’. Many of the categories at GCU have a Love and Romance sub-category and that is the theme for November. So let’s get to our challenge …
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November Design Challenge
Theme: Love is in the Air
Requirements:
- There must be a couple obviously enamored with each other in the imagery – two people, two animals, two zombies or two aliens, it matters not … it just needs to be a couple showing closeness and affection.
- Though the verse does not have to say “Love is in the air”, it should speak to love and romance.
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Entry Deadline: Monday, November 30th, 2015
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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 Category / Any Occasion where Love and Romance is the theme.
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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: November 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.
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BLIND Judging: We hope each of you enter 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 beyond each entry. This eliminates any and all concerns with ‘favoritism’. Results will post on the Community Blog – by December 2nd. 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 22,000 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 can not be 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: 1.2K!
- 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!
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 can not be 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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Tips:
Check out these tips, tricks, freebies, and tutorials from our own GCU Community Blog which might be helpful in this month’s Challenge.
Dash of Inspiration: Tips from Professional Digital Artists
Nuts and Bolts: How to Write Greeting Card Verse
Dash of Inspiration: Working with Color
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ENJOY and JOIN in the Challenge Fun!
My ‘design toolbox’ is being migrated to a 5-terabyte drive, so I don’t have access to my ‘goodies’ this week, therefore I leave you with an example of an older card of mine.
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Dash of Inspiration: Tropical Themed FREEBIES
Last Monday I mentioned that one of the ‘hot’ design themes for 2016 is the tropics. Today I’m sharing some great FREE commercial use tidbits for your designs next year centered around this style. We’ll start out with these great shapes form Photoshop …
by All-Silhouettes.com
46 Palm Leaf Shapes from All-Silhouettes.com
PLUS: 38 Palm Trees and Tropical Scene Shape Set, also from All-Silhouettes.com
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Courtesy of the CoffeeShopBlog.com
CoffeeShop.blog – “Large Chevron” Digital Paper Kit
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Here are some fun tropical-themed dingbat fonts for those of you who like to use them in your designs.
Tropicana BV font — Created in 2004 by Blue Vinyl
Tropicana BV font — Created in 2004 by Blue Vinyl
Hibiscus Dingbat Font by pokelele
Hibiscus by pokelele at dafont.com
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For those who don’t mind investing a bit of their card earnings back into their business, here are some great places to shop for tropical design elements:
Creative Market has thousands of beautifully designed elements for the designer and over 5,000 in a sort for ‘tropical’!
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Enjoy and have fun designing!
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Dash of Inspiration: Design Trends for 2016
Time to be thinking well into 2016, so what will be trending that we greeting card designers should know?
Courtesy of Pantone.com
- Wedding Colors for 2016 from Tulle and Chantilly
Courtesy of TulleandChantilly.com
- Color Trends in Invitation Designs for 2015 / 2016 from Mospens Studio
- Trends for designers in 2016 include, organic textures and shapes, wild and exotic animals, tropics and warm metallic hues to name a few, are all in vogue next year.The Top Ten Design Trends for 2016 from the Ace of Spades Blog
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There’s still time to enter this month’s Design Challenge: Paint the Town … Red
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Until next week … LEARN … CREATE … INSPIRE!
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Dash of Inspiration: Mastering the Art of Greeting Card Design
We all know that pushing yourself to be better, creates a natural ability in ourselves to improve. Most of us are very competitive with ourselves even if not so with others and that’s what drives us to improve. Whether that’s pushing through another mile for the runner, getting closer to the target for the marksman, or growing as an artist in both technique, quality and marketability; the same desire for growth exists. To be competitive with the best in the ‘business’, such as professional athletes, the greeting card artist never stops improving their knowledge base and skill level.
For those artists who have recently jumped into the greeting card world – and for any artist who has not mastered all these areas, whose cards are not making it through the review cycle at GCU with 100% approval rate – be honest with yourself and look at your cards to date. You should recognize the areas which need strengthening in order for you to grow as a greeting card designer. If you do the time to master your craft, your cards sales will grow and those thresholds will be met every quarter!
Eight areas to master to be a competitive greeting card designer. For the past four-years, the Community Blog has been offering tips and tutorials from some of GCU’s best selling artists. Take advantage of these tools and you will reap the benefits!
1. Ability to create artwork and verse well-suited to the occasion, age, gender.
Occasion/Gender/Age Marketability
Make the Image Match the Occasion
2. Creative and proficient typography skills.
Hundreds of Fonts to Grab for Your Toolbox
3. Strong understanding of composition and how to balance elements in an image.
4. Fine tuned expertise in the medium you choose to work in, e.g., photography, digital, watercolor …
5. Willingness to write unique verse.
How to Write Greeting Card Verse
6. Attention to detail, e.g., grammar, spelling, image quality, alignment …
7. Strong color sense, i.e., the ability to create pleasing and appropriate colors and to combine colors.
8. Thorough comprehension of Terms of Use, i.e., public domain vs. creative commons, crediting the resource, commercial use vs. personal use …
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Why not push yourself to be GREAT at what you love to do?
Check out our October Dash of Inspiration Design Challenge, you could be the next winner!
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Dash of Inspiration: October Design Challenge
AND OUR WINNERS ARE …
1st Place goes to Michelle Lanoue with PID 1405754
October Dash of Inspiration Challenge 1st Place Michelle Lanoue
2nd Place goes to Ron Magnes with PID 1405010
October Dash of Inspiration Challenge 2nd Place Ron Magnes
CONGRATULATIONS to both of you and to ALL who participated with your fabulous designs. We just loved seeing the different directions creativity and inspiration took each of you, and this was a very close race to the finish line .. Well done!
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Congratulations to our September winners, Barbara Schreiber and Julia Bryant!
The entries for the past two months of challenges has been sparse. We do hope you’ll join us and take advantage of the fun, challenge yourself to create outside the box, and compete for the opportunity to reap the rewards of having your card picked by the GCU Panel of Challenge Judges for free promotion!
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For all the wonderful artists at GCU who paint their greeting card images, this design challenge should be right up your alley! And – with all the exceptional digital tools and tutorials out there for the photographer and digital artist to use to create realistic paintings from photographs – (many of which are free to try) – this month’s challenge should be a lot of fun and give you the reason you’ve been waiting for to experiment with some of these great painting tools! Okay, let’s get to it …
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October Design Challenge
Theme: Paint the Town … Red
Requirements:
- Paint the town, city, or neighborhood – your own, one you’ve visited, one you’d like to visit or one that exists only in your mind – what’s important is that it LOOKS like a painting.
- Since an entire town painted red may not make for a marketable greeting card (unless you paint a zombie town!) just add a touch of red somewhere in your painting big or small, as long as it’s there (text alone doesn’t count).
- Watch your perspective! Look at my example, see how slanted the perspective was, with the buildings falling backwards in the original photograph? Make sure that your vertical and horizontal lines are straight on your buildings or your submission won’t pass the GCU Review Cycle and if it doesn’t get approved, it can’t be entered.
- In order to be considered for the challenge, the image must consist of three or more buildings.
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Entry Deadline: Friday, October 30th, 2015
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October Design Challenge Example
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 Category / Any Occasion where Home, House, Neighborhood or Location is appropriate.
Tips: From Our House – New Home – Greetings from Your State, Country, Town – New Address
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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: August 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.
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BLIND Judging: We hope each of you enter 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 beyond each entry. This eliminates any and all concerns with ‘favoritism’. Results will post on the Community Blog – by November 4th. 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.
……………………………………………………………………
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 22,000 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 can not be 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: 1.2K!
- 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!
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 can not be 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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Tips:
Check out these tips, tricks, freebies, and tutorials from our own GCU Community Blog which might be helpful in this month’s Challenge.
Dash of Inspiration: Digital Tablet, Digital Painting
Dash of Inspiration: Image Quality – Excessive Effects
Dash of Inspiration: Submission Guidelines: Composition – Perspective
Dash of Inspiration – A Matter of Perspective
List of some Digital Painting Free Programs and/or Free Trial Programs – NOTE: I have NOT downloaded from this site, therefore this link is not a personal recommendation. It’s a list, if you have experience with the site and/or are comfortable with you computers protection to download, then great – if not, use it as a list to get names of software you might be interested in trying and go search for a site you do trust.
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Participants:
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Wanted New Cards: Police Officer
We’d like you to create at least one card for this category using the Stock Cards function (Bigstock) or your own graphic designs.
Remember, when you’re submitting your new card, add a little note about the intended category in your Notes to Reviewers – cards submitted for underused categories are much more likely to be approved provided they follow the Submission Guidelines. Be inventive, be clever, be creative. Good luck!
Today’s category with 9 cards is:
Holidays – Christmas – Occupation Specific – Police Officer
The customer especially requested K9 Officers Christmas cards.
GCU Community 