Land of Cupcakes
this morning, all of the photos I needed to take came out pretty good. I'm becoming more comfortable with the photo side of Etsy. colors could have been more vibrant, but it is raining here today so there is very little light. it was fun to take more photos of shells. I grew up by the ocean, and cannot wait to get back to the beach in April!
here are the tags that came into the shop today. I'll work on some cloth with this simple image, as well as some upcoming birds. I'm leaning toward trying out more pattern these days, though I'm not sure if it's less fetching since I don't use a computer for my work.
Also, my wonderful sister gave me a tutorial last night (while watching last weeks Lost again... are we addicted or what!?) on Iron-Ons! Here's what my finished product looks like:
Pretty amazing for me to see all these designs on one sheet. I've had some failures as of late, the most disturbing was my printing on fabric attempt:
Obviously I've spent too much time staring at my shop lately, too. So it was really fun to bring some colorful, sweet new children's designs into the shop. Refreshing!
Morning, all. Things around here have been stops and starts for the last many days as my health had gone a bit wobbly. After an amazing amount of sleep I'm feeling better, looking around my desk and thinking... "Tuesday already?"
I woke up to a lovely email from the brains behind Cuteable that I've been added to their list of cute finds! A little reminder that I need to get some new boy designs into the shop... spring, as of yet, has been all about the ladies. Thank you Cuteable! Looking good, Blue Dragon! :)
Last week I wrote that the Lovely Bird design was too big to print on anything else... and then I remembered those fantastic long envelopes I bought for Valentine's Day. She looks great on the deep red paper, but I only made about 7 of these, so I'm still deciding what to do with them. Celeste has encouraged me to get this lovely lady onto cloth for a patch...
PS- Those lovely Knitter Notes that have lived in Bamboo Village for the last several months now have a baby brother, look at that knitting otter go town! :) The otter came into ouou this morning, adorable little ears and all!
Took me a while to find my shop, I was scrolling and scrolling looking for those thick black lines to no avail... forgetting that I too had a soft pink piece in the showcase. Look see in the upper left? I had some time to re-shoot the new tags (third times the charm?) this weekend. The key, I have found, to any patience at all with taking photos (during winter ...outside...) for Etsy is to do it in small batches. I was finally happy with different backgrounds on those.
Winter has still got it's grip in my shop, but we are all friends of cocoa and scarves, snowflakes and tea. That's just fine with me... and also the wonderful new thisiskate, who put together the fun treasury you see above. Thisiskate is a new shop, and has already been in a couple treasuries as well as the front page!!! Go Kate! I was so happy to see those Afternoon Cocoa Gocco cards have a second life, and among such fantastic shops as reiter8 and Matty8080! Wow!
Hello friends! Things are finally gaining some momentum over here at ou central, today has been a day of heroic printing, printing, (and spur-of-the-moment) printing! 
The very last of the tag printing (and some envelopes TBA) are these charming Snow white and blue sweets. Had to get these in the shop as the very last of my winter-wares. I'm printing oodles of these so that I will have some tucked away for next winter. It may be over 60 degrees (and sun beginning to appear) here in Bizarro Weather Land, but I always did like snow. 
We just brought in a new 3 color print, Sofie and Bird, this time in card form. The technique here is a little different, instead of the balancing of several screens as in Married to the Sea, these cards are just a one-screen process with fingers crossed. Thus, it was an extremely short print run.
You know, I just couldn't wait anymore to introduce you to the newest Gocco art print in ouou! Married to the Sea is my first ever three color print! The first print run having gone so well... I'm just wild about those waves, and though it was quite a hurdle to get all the alignments right, all 14 in this limited run came out just spectacular!
Is that an adorabuls wittow pander behbeh I see? These new mailing labels are freebies I made for Bamboo Village and I to share. I was going for a sketched pen look, although these are Gocco prints, and I am really happy with the outcome. There are several new tags on the small white coming into the shop (as well as another panda) in the next few weeks, but for now I thought I'd show you my freebies.
They're up! The new Chinese New Year cards are in the shop as of tonight - Yay! Talk about jolly, and what fun it was to draw those pudgy little hands. :) I remember my first Chinese New Year in Boston's China Town when I was very little, it is fun to think that every year there is a new Chinese zodiac sign to figure out how to draw.
At long last those Little Monkey gift tags finally have company! I may have already said that I have some larger Gocco projects on the burner, until I can get those together it was really satisfying to have time (and tags) to do a large run of smaller images.
Here is the Gocco printer while I was taking a break between print runs. This latest screen has a whopping total of 5 designs on it (!!!) as well as fancy new labels for the Moleskines and large cards. It was really exciting to try out some of the treasure trove of new colors, I had to really hold myself back from possibly wrecking a screen by switching colors around between sets.
This image is already a note card set, laser printed, in the shop and one of my favorite recent designs. I couldn't wait to see it with some delicious ink. I was so happy with this deep forest green on the white tags, that I printed a few Moleskines, too! There are some Gocco printed cards as well, but they are not in the shop yet.
These two were drawn in hopes to get into the shop for Christmas, but were lost in my stack of papers and never got scanned. Stumbling on them the other day when the Gocco screens came in, I excitedly went about photocopying until they were sized right then making minor changes to their clothes and hair. 
Our Gocco is the bigger model, so though it can give you beautiful fine lines you must be careful with blocks of color being too thick. I tried the pink and avocado green inks, perfect compliments to each other, and they look so good on the white card stock of these large tags. The pink ink has a surprisingly pearlescent quality, increasing my curiosity about the other new colors! I haven't figured out what else to do with these two, but for now I am giddily enamored by the results of this latest printmaking project.
Last, I am still in the very beginning of this one, but a great way to kick off the New Year would be to pick up a copy of Michael Pollan's new book In Defense of Food. I was luckily home last week for this interview with Pollan by Marty Moss-Coane of Radio Times, and was stuck to the radio until it ended. Celeste also heard the interview, and picked up the book the other night.
Today I uploaded some photos on Etsy of my new packaging- ta da! Not too different from the old packaging (you still get to unwrap something) but with less waste. Recycled card stock is just out of my $$ range, so I am trying to make alterations where I can to make sure my packages are friendly to the earth. 
Since the last trip to the printer, and this week's delivery of miniature envelopes from our friendly neighborhood UPS, mini cards are back in stock! These little guys sure do take a while to finish! Hopefully the stock I have now should hold strong through all your mini-needs! :)
Not only did the teeny tiny envelopes come in the mail, but our Gocco supplies did too... and since I wasn't the one who put the order through, I got to be delightfully surprised by the new colors! It will take a while to get all my ducks in a row for the new round of printmaking. Right now I am drawing and getting projects to scale for new designs to be made into screens.
In conclusion, there is some brevity to my blogging tonight, I am going to leave you with this Benny & Joon treasury somebody put together last week. They even found raisins! These people are so amazing!
