After way too many years of feeling embarrassed about my portfolio website, I finally created an up to date version here. As I have in the past, I sent out a promotional mailing around Valentine's day, this time with a paper horse to announce the new site. It featured as many horses as I could get in one mailing, as I've always been pretty obsessed with them and decided it's about time I embrace it. In grade school the kids called me Flicka, which I can't say I didn't deserve.
The front of card is a gouache illustration I first made in my sketchbook - I tend to draw horses. I scanned it in and designed the back of the card (after spending a while figuring out a logo) in Illustrator. The cards were printed with Moo, which I've done a number of times and I'm always happy with the results. The colors are bright and the thickness of the paper is nice too. I get the Luxe postcards which have a colored edge.
The other good thing about Moo is you can order as many different designs for the back of your cards as you want. So I ordered half with the promotional back and the other half a valentine message for family and friends. Everyone got a paper horse.
I cut out the horses on my Silhouette Cameo. It's great having a digital cutter, but man they can be finicky. Starting with the horse I designed for a logo, I had to work through a few different versions to get something simple enough it would cut easily. In the end it still saves a ton of time to have the machine. Mine is an older version but it's still working well for me.
The envelopes are my favorite shade of sea foam from Paper Presentation, where I also got the paper for the horses. The postage stamp is a custom from Zazzle and my horse-shaped address stamp I've had for a while - it was made by Casey Rubber Stamps which is an institution in the East Village. I addressed the envelopes with a Kuretake brush pen from Jet Pens - such a great resource for hand letterers.
It's been fun hearing feedback about the mailing - my friends with kids have gotten some good use out of the horse. I need to start thinking about what to do next year!