Wanted: New Cards – Get Well, Head Lice
Every week from now on, we’ll be showcasing a GCU category that has few or no 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 category with only 5 card is:
Occasions – Get Well/Feel Better – Head Lice
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Every week we showcase a GCU category that has few or no cards. 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 only 4 cards is:
Invitations – Birthday Party for Kids Invitations – Pizza Party
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Nuts and Bolts: Design of the Day
I’ll bet at least some of you are wondering, “How the heck do I win the Design of the Day award?” Well, I figured you might be, here’s the scoop.
The exact process of how a card is chosen by the GCU Team to win the Design of the Day remains a mystery (in much the same way as reviewers’ real identities are protected). However, there are some guidelines.
- For technical reasons, at this time only portrait (5×7) cards are eligible (I totally understand this one – I measured the available space, and a landscape card wouldn’t fit).
- Recently approved cards and new artists get preference.
- Eligible cards are top notch in their design with excellent composition, high marketability, and commercial appeal. Whether photography or illustration based, an eligible card must show a high degree of professionalism in all areas, and both design and verse should be relevant to the chosen category.
- To reflect the fact that Greeting Card Universe’s success is due to its selection of highly unique greeting cards for every imaginable occasion and purposes, cards designed for a specific purpose and containing a relevant inside verse are preferred.
- An effort is made not to choose the same artist twice in the same month.
How do you know if you’ve won the Design of the Day? You’ll receive a notification via your GCU store through the Contact This Artist link (and every one of you should have that module ON in your store for obvious reasons). I saw the other day that Team GCU has also recently started adding a five star review to winning cards, so watch for that as well.
What can you do to promote the Design of the Day? If you’ve won, you’ve got bragging rights, so go for it! Especially spread the word on your social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, and/or on your blog and/or website.
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Font Frenzy: Carnivale Freakshow
Vintage/retro being all the rage, it’s handy to have fonts that hail from a time period long past. Carnivale Freakshow is a big, bold font with a real stage presence, suitable to use with old graphics of the vintage variety. Best of all, it’s free for commercial use. See example below. Download to your designer’s toolbox today and have fun!
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Dash of Inspiration: Get Your Cards Found!
How do you increase your card sales? Here are some areas which have proven successful for me and others on GCU, so if you haven’t taken the time to improve your own cards … you’re missing out!
REWORK your old card fronts! In case you didn’t know or have forgotten, GCU has been going through a process since 2012 to review every card on GCU – in every artist’s store – against the Submission Guidelines. This means that cards by the thousands are either being returned for simple modifications such as; border issues, typography, ellipsis, etc or being declined – when you could have saved them before the reviewers ever found them. I’ve found that when I take the time to improve the design on my old cards, they begin selling nearly immediately.
Here are some helpful posts from the past:
Better Designs = More Approvals = More Sales
10 Reasons Why Your Photos Might Not Meet Submission Guidelines
METADATA is absolutely critical, more today than ever. GCU has stayed on top of all the changes external search engines have made in how they see and rank content. Keywords are of less importance off-site than unique content. If you do not take the time to make the most out of each Card Title, Keywords and Card Description (Artist’s Notes), then your cards are likely not selling very well. In fact, as I understand it, Google won’t even see any card on GCU without a Card Description which reads yellow or green for the Uniqueness Factor. Therefore, once again, the choice is yours. Do the work, reap the benefits.
These posts offer detailed info which might help on this subject:
Uniqueness & Artist’s Notes & SEO
Understanding SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
MARKETING does work if you can find what works for you. Any online presence which you create, whether it’s your GCU store, a blog or a social media account require you to add ‘new content’ at least once a week (more frequently is better). If you abandon these accounts for more than a week at a time, they drop significantly and possibly even to the bottom of search engine findings. AND … there is a difference between new content and spamming – the latter being posting product links every few minutes. Selling online requires momentum – more activity and better content means more sales, more sales means increased momentum – it’s a continuous growth pattern of which you make or break depending on your choices.
We have many great Marketing Posts on the Community Blog which can help you.
Remember, it’s all about what you choose to do. If you choose not to improve your old designs, then you need to be okay with GCU doing it for you – even if that means they decline your cards. If you choose not to improve your metadata, then you need to be fine with minimum sales and be happy for other artists who have done the hard work, rather than think they are getting special treatment.
Get out there and get to work 🙂
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Don’t forget to check out our Dash of Inspiration Design Challenge!
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Doreen Erhardt©
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Dash of Inspiration: Fonts on Sale!
Just passing along some fun font sales this week – I don’t know about you, but I can never seem to have enough!
Festivo Letters by Ahmet Altun at FontSpring
Isabella Script (40% Off) by Seniors at Creative Market
Here are a couple of FREE grabs …
Hamster Script (Free Font) by Artimasa Studio
Nickainley Script – Free Font by Seniors Studio
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Remember, you have until Wednesday, August 26th to enter this month’s Dash of Inspiration Design Challenge!
If you haven’t already, check out our August Dash of Inspiration Design Challenge!
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So until next week … Learn … Create … Inspire!
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Dash of Inspiration: Catchlights = Life
If you are a photographer, you should know about catch light or catchlights which is a highlight in your subject’s eye from a light source. These are critical for any living being, in other words, animals too. If you took photography classes you would hear the professor say that catch lights equal life, without them the eyes look dead. There is no personality, no sparkle, nothing to draw the viewer in to face of your subject.
Whether this is something new or you’d like a refresher, these are some great links:
What are Catch Lights? by A Beautiful Mess
Making Eyes Pop and Sparkle and Finding the Light by Paint the Moon
Add Catch Light to Eyes using Photoshop | TrickyPhotoshop
For our visual artists, using traditional mediums, here is a quick video tutorial:
How to Draw a Dog’s Eye With Watercolors : Visual Art Tips
Author: Janae Hardy©
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If you haven’t already, check out our August Dash of Inspiration Design Challenge!
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Wanted: New Cards – Congratulations, Delivering First Sermon
Every week, we showcase a GCU category that has few or no cards. 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 0 cards is:
Congratulations – Delivering 1st/First Sermon
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Inspiration Station: Wedding Trends Spring 2016
Brides plan their weddings in advance, so now’s the time to be thinking of next year and new designs for all those Wedding and Bridal Party invitations. Here are a couple of inspirations for you to look at that’ll get you fired up and ready to go – have fun!
25 Hot Wedding Color Combinations
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Dash of Inspiration: August Design Challenge
Congratulations to our July challenge winners – 1st place: Barbara Schreiber with PID 1387816 and our runner up for July was Julia Bryant with PID 1387680 – marvelous work ladies!
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Whether you think of them as mythical, magical, legendary, folklore or imaginary – creatures like elves, phoenix, dragons and mermaids have captured the hearts of all ages for centuries. This month’s challenge should inspire you to let your imagination visit the fantasy world and connect your idea to a theme and category well-suited for a greeting card.
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August Design Challenge
Theme: Magical Creatures in a Fantasy World
Requirements:
- Create a fantasy world with at least ONE mythical, magical or legendary creature from either of these two lists:
List of Legendary Creatures or Mystic Creatures A-Z List
- Your artwork, card front text and/or verse, must all be a well-blended match to suit the recipient and category you choose – and speak directly or indirectly to Magic.
Whether you work as I did – using multiple elements to create something new and different – or you are an illustrator, painter or cartoonist; this challenge should inspire all of you to step into a fun and magical world of your very own creation.
Doreen Erhardt©2015 – August Challenge Example
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Entry Deadline: August 26th, 2015 (ending on a Wednesday again this month)
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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
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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 August 31st. 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 – nearly 17,000 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 over 800 followers.
- 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.
Nuts and Bolts: How to Write Greeting Card Verse
Dash of Inspiration: Don’t be a Copy Cat
Nuts and Bolts: The Right Image
……………………………………..and the winners are …………………….
1st place goes to Betsy Bush with PID 1394208
1st Place Winner by Betsy Bush!
2nd Place goes to Julia Bryant with PID 1394442
2nd Place Winner by Julia Bryant
Congratulations! Great entries, everyone!
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GCU Community 