I have some exciting news on the business front to share with you all!  You’ve heard of the website snapfish.com, right?  Well, they are celebrating their 10th year in business this year.  And with that, they’ve announced a new initiative back in March – April.

Snapfish is announcing a new division of their website called Snapfish Publisher.  It’s launching this summer (July 29th, to be exact) and will include a myriad of personalized photo merchandise – starting with social stationery, then moving into other categories such as photo books, calendars, and the like.

According to the official press release, “This summer, a select group of designers will launch new templates for cards, followed by photo books”

I am proud to announce that Sweet Cricket Stationery was chosen to be one of the inaugural designers for Snapfish Publisher! I’ll be creating an exclusive line of photo cards, invitations, and social stationery that will only be available via Snapfish Publisher.  Snapfish is the #1 online personal publishing service, with 85 million registered users in 22 countries.  I’m thrilled to have this opportunity and to be a part of this new initiative from such an established player in this industry.

And….all you closet designers out there – good news for you too.  Snapfish Publisher has plans down the road to open up its API to everyone – meaning you can get in on the action too!

As for me, I’m currently designing my Holiday 2010 Photo Cards…ahhh Christmas in June.  It’s oddly refreshing and I do think that designing winter cards in the heat of the summer is actually helping to keep me cool.

Cheers!

Kate

Sent out 3 sets of stationery to a wonderful Southern Woman this week.  She had sets of 25 folded stationery cards made for her friends to thank them for helping her out recently after a surgery.

My client chose this design:  But we customized the colors of the stationery to better suit her friends’ personalities, on request.   We tried a few different color combos, but ended up liking this the best:

Here’s a pic of all three sets, wrapped up and ready to be shipped out:

And another with a good shot of the details:

By simply changing the color scheme of the stationery from black/hot pink to a more subtle chocolate brown/teal, we changed the look of the cards substantially.  The black/pink combo is a much more youthful, fun stationery color palette – perfect for younger clients.  But as these women were looking for a more elegant, refined stationery color palette, and the brown/teal was just the thing.

It’s amazing how a little tinkering with color can change the feel of the whole card without making any changes to the stationery design!

We are more than happy to work with our clients to change the colors of any of our designs to your liking.  In this instance, I worked with the client by sending digital proofs of the cards in 4 different color schemes, and she picked the one she liked the best.  The whole process was simple and didn’t add any additional time to the processing of her order because we were able to communicate via email and finalize the color schemes in 1 day.

I was reading this article about the National Stationery Show from the New York Times that, frankly was dissing on the NSS this year – focusing on petty theft and the proliferation of racy, vulgar cards that have more shock value than aesthetic value.  The jist of what the author was trying to say was that the act of handwriting a note to a friend or family member is falling by the wayside, while texting, email, and Facebooking are now the mainstream way to correspond with others.

True, true.  Heck, I’m a stationer and I’m writing a blog for heaven’s sake.  I love social media, from a business and a personal standpoint.  I enjoy seeing pictures of my friends’ kids and reading witty status updates from people I would never see otherwise. But really, is there any greater thrill than finding a hand addressed card in the mail as you rifle through the bills and junk mail?  The greatest text message in the world just can not replicate the feeling that receiving a note written on stationery can.

But there was one bright spot in this article – a marvelous quote from Susan January, Vice President of the Greeting Card Association and owner of the greeting card company Leanin’ Tree.  What she said was simple, but rang so true:

“The idea that the Internet would kill off the gift card industry was definitely exaggerated,” she said. “Even young people have a sense of buying gift cards for special occasions. You’re not going to send a text for Mother’s Day. When it’s important, it’s paper.”

I have no problem texting my friends after a fun night out to say thanks.  But Susan is right – I can’t ever see myself (or anyone else I know for that matter) texting or emailing a bride and groom to say congratulations, a grieving friend to offer condolences, or your child on their birthday to wish them well.

When it’s important, it’s paper.  For now and forever!