calling cards: a great holiday gift idea!

What are calling cards, you ask? Think old school social networking. february 13 creative's huge selection of designs offers something for everyone. From moms to grandmas, wine enthusiasts to gardeners, dog lovers to job seekers, our contemporary calling cards are a clever and unexpected way to share your contact information and interests.

Easy to order online, each design can be personalized with your own details and many can also accommodate a photo or two. Packaged in a lovely chocolate brown box, the cards measure 3" x 2" and are sold in sets of 25 for $15.00. See our entire collection of calling cards, available exclusively at Cardstore.com. Order before December 31st and use our Friends and Family Discount (FRIEND15) at checkout to receive 15% off your order (excluding shipping and handling). If you’d like to receive your calling cards before Christmas Eve check here for shipping deadlines.

Happy holiday shopping!

….. pam, betsy and amy …..

noteworthy holiday gift idea

Our industrious friends over at Cardstore.com have a brand new product out just in time for holiday gift-giving and thank-you-note-writing: boxed notecards, including several february 13 creative favorites. Many designs can be personalized on the front with a name or brief message. Nicely priced at $21, each set of 12 cards and envelopes arrives in a stylish keepsake box. Plus, you can use our Friends and Family discount to save 15%! (Excludes shipping and handling; order before December 30th and enter the code FRIEND15 at checkout).

celebrating: henry's annual halloween costume challenge

It's been quite a while since I've made a Halloween costume for my son Henry (now 16), but back in the day, he set some pretty crazy challenges in front of me. I have a post up at Designing Moms, sharing one of the earlier costumes I devised for him (before he really started giving me art direction.) In the process of writing that post, I pulled out photos of all his costumes over the years, and had fun reliving those insane experiments with spray paint, fake fur and glue guns. It always seemed a little sad to me that our creations only lived for one day, so indulge me while I present a “virtual” Halloween parade of some of my favorites! If you’re interested in tips on recreating any of these yourself, just leave a comment and I’ll do my best to help.


Bartholomew Collins, prisoner of the Terwilliker Institute.
If you’ve never seen “The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T,” go rent it NOW!


A prairie dog... “popping out of his mound.”


Meerkatus Giganticus


African Pygmy Hedgehog
Those are toothpicks. I’m still picking splinters out of my fingers...


I’m not quite sure what to say about this one except that the little guy has a retractable tongue that “ate” candy. Major credit is due to the wonderful artist, David Kirk (author of “Miss Spider’s Tea Party,” among others), who created the coin-collecting sculpture that this costume is (faithfully) based on. And, it must be noted that this was the year that Henry really took control of his own Halloween costumes. I was a mere technical adviser.


Our last hurrah, from 2005, a gigantic WORKING iPod.

And speaking of Halloween costumes, head on over to Cardstore.com’s Silliest Halloween Costume Contest to share photos of your silliest Halloween costume (of you, your pet, or your kids!).

What are you going to be this Halloween??

..... Betsy .....

e is for elie and emma : interns extraordinaire

The summer flew by and I’m just now getting around to writing about some of our happiest news from the whirlwind that was junejulyaugust... We had our first summer interns! Elie and Emma came to us via a high school here in San Francisco and they worked with me at f13 world headquarters, providing expert help in so many ways—from production design on our cardstore.com collection, to data entry, to inspiration-scouting, to manufacturer research and more. Their skill and efficiency at this wide variety of tasks—on top of incredible creative talents, intelligence and professionalism— just blew us away.

They even contributed to our calling card collection with two of our favorite new designs, seen above (Elie’s is on the left, Emma’s on the right). Elie’s beautiful watercolor monogram design is now available for personalizing and ordering here. Emma’s cool constructivist design will be available in mid-October and also comes as a folded notecard. Order lots, order often and tell your friends... all proceeds go directly to the respective artist!

We were so fortunate to have their help and miss them dearly. A million thanks to Elie and Emma and best of luck in school this year!

(on a related note: our calling cards were featured recently on "View from the Bay"!)

send some love, send some hope, send a (free!) card

We’re delighted to let you know about a cool project—Hope is in the Cards—started by a fellow designer, Russ Haan. It’s a simple effort to spread some good vibes in these vibrationally-challenged times.. one person to another, via good old-fashioned snail mail. The idea is to get millions of individuals to send one greeting card each—to a friend, relation, or colleague—to express a simple positive message. Maybe it’s love. Could be encouragement. Perhaps it’s support, thanks, or admiration. The uplifting specifics are up to you!

Many greeting card companies and retailers are supporting Hope is in the Cards by giving away free stamps and/or cards to customers during Week of Hope, September 1-7. Our friends at Cardstore.com are giving away the cards AND the stamps. They have put together a collection of 50 designs in a special “Hope Collection” (including Amy's sweet-talkin' penguins, above, and a few other f13 beauties!).

You can see the Cardstore.com Hope Collection here.
Enter the code SENDHOPE at checkout. This will cover the entire cost of one card, including postage (anywhere in the world).

We hope this movement ignites a year-round passion for spontaneous expressions of love, support, thanks and encouragement. Imagine the power of that!

Happy sending!

[update : Apparently the response to this offer at Cardstore has been huge! Traffic may be a little slow on their site so be patient and remember, you have until 9/7 to create and send your free card.]

old-school social networking

So, pretty much everyone we ran into at Surtex and the Stationery Show was twittering and facebooking all over the place. I know how important all this social networking is to building awareness of our company, but I can barely keep up with email (let alone this blog)! Plus, like many in this profession, I will probably always be more charmed by a good old-fashioned piece of paper more than by anything digital. That's why I was so excited when our friends at Cardstore asked us to help them launch a great new product: personal business cards. I like to refer to them as "calling cards" because that's even more quaint and old-fangled.

These are just a few of the designs in our new collection. You can see the whole kit-and-kaboodle here. In addition to cards for personal use, we have a great selection of "mommy cards" for modern moms who want a stylish, easy way to share contact info and set up playdates.


And, for those of you who parent children of the four-legged variety, we've even turned Amy's fabulous "Good Dog" series into calling cards that you can exchange with new friends at the dog park! We have 16 of the most popular breeds now and will be adding more soon. Leave a comment here if you don't see your pooch. Send us the breed name or, better yet, email us a photo of your baby and we'll use it as the basis for our next design! (send to: gooddog[at]february13creative[dot]com)

As with all our products at Cardstore, these designs can be easily customized with your own photos and information. And, Cardstore has just introduced a new, greener paper for most of their products, including our cards. It's 100% post-consumer waste, chlorine-free processed, Green Seal Certified and manufactured entirely with wind-generated electricity. Yay!
And last but not least, order between now and July 31st and receive 15% off your first order of our calling cards. Enter code personal 15 at checkout.
see the entire february 13 creative calling card collection here.

catching up!

Hey hey! We're back from a great show in NYC!
Technical difficulties while we were away have left me playing catch-up on lots of fun news. First off... Congratulations to Roberta for her winning entry in our first-ever f13 blog contest. Her sweet name for our frog friend, Cedric, was inspired by our motto, "celebrate everyday": CED[Celebrate EveryDay]ric. How could we resist? Roberta, you can spread the celebration around when you receive your prize... our lovely little set of gift tags (2 each of 6 great designs) in a reusable case, plus a coupon offering for our new product on Cardstore.com... personal calling cards! More on those in the next post, tomorrow!

Seems like a great time to start our blog, since we have something big to celebrate: our television debut!

The show was View From the Bay, an afternoon talk show that airs live, daily on the ABC affiliate here in San Francisco. The appearance was arranged by our friends at cardstore.com and we're so thankful to them for the opportunity. The View people wanted me to talk about a few ideas for DIY, easy, affordable holiday cards, so we threw in a couple other projects and saved the best—cardstore.com—for last.

Take a look at the clip and try to imagine the color of the cards being a whole lot prettier (They’re right about the camera draining color… my lips were a lot prettier than they look here, too.)



We spent about a week preparing for this tiny 5-minute-long segment, which seems absurdly out of proportion, but I know that I would have been a jittery mess without all that preparation. Pam and Amy were my creative genies behind the scenes and I’m thanking my lucky stars all over again to have them.

I could not have wished for a better show to introduce me to TV land. Everyone involved was so helpful and reassuring, especially my host, Lisa Quinn. The whole vibe of the show when you watch is totally welcoming, upbeat, helpful—and that’s how it feels on set.

For those of you who may be wanting just a little more detail than we could fit in our allotted five minutes, here are some more tips on the projects we featured.

simple but sophisticated collage cards

• We love the stylish results we get from a really simple technique: use one basic shape repeated over and over again.
• Cut your pieces from magazines and other papers (catalogs, old greeting cards, maps, maybe even some of your kids’ artwork!).
• Look for images with large areas that are more or less one color but have some interesting texture and depth. Believe it or not, photo close-ups of food, clothing, carpeting, grass, trees can all be used to fantastic effect with this technique.
• By limiting your palette to just one color family (e.g. pinks/reds/plums), you make the whole thing easier and it you gives you a really sophisticated look in the end.
• You can cut most of the shapes shown here freehand. Or if you’re more persnickety, use things you find around the house as templates—coins are great for making perfect circles—or make a simple cardboard template for yourself. Different kinds of craft scissors and punches can create interesting shapes and edges as well.
  
• For the base card, we recommend buying pre-cut and folded blank cards, to save yourself some hassle. There are lots of great colors and styles available at places like Paper Source and they often come with matching envelopes.
• Once you have a whole bunch of your shapes cut out, you arrange them on your base card to your liking, then glue them in place. We definitely recommend glue sticks—especially the kind that comes in a thin, pen-like tube—it’s easy to apply, keeps the mess to a minimum and dries quickly and smoothly. You may want to have a pair of tweezers to handle really tiny pieces.
• If you don’t want to make individual collage cards for everyone on your mailing list (a nice idea, but really, who has that kind of time?!), take one or more of your favorites down to your local photocopy place. Most now have scanning services and inexpensive but good quality digital printing services so you can get multiples of your favorite design really easily.
• Remember, you can also use your collage to make a frame for a photo, or for your annual holiday letter!

photo booth card

• This idea was inspired by those great old vintage photo booths. A lot of people like to send photo cards and this is a really unexpected way to do it.The photos are always just fun and spontaneous and, of course, everyone looks great in black and white!
• You can find photo booths around the Bay Area and I'm sure in many other places around the globe (a quick Google search will turn up some interesting lists compiled by photo booth aficionados). Our favorites are at the Musee Mecanique, on Pier 45 here in SF. They have two booths (both are the old-school, black-and-white versions that we love) and the added advantage of an attendant on the premises in case the thing misbehaves).
• This project has a bonus: a really fun activity in addition to a totally personal holiday greeting.
• You can use simple signs (hand-made or computer-generated) to spell out our holiday message...maybe some props… take it all down to the photo booth and just snap away.
• If you plan it very carefully, you might be able to get it all one take, but honestly, this is so much fun that we recommend taking several strips. The photos usually come four frames to a strip, and cost around $3 each. Then you can just pick and choose the frames you like best and then cut and rearrange them to form a full strip.
• Make multiple copies on heavy-weight white card stock and cut to size. If you have your own scanner and a decent printer, you could make the copies yourself. Or just take it down to your favorite photocopy store, as we suggested above for the collage cards. Note: you may want to enlarge the final strip (via copier or printer settings) by 10-15%, to get a better fit in your envelope (see below).
• The finished size is a little unusual, so you might be wondering what kind of envelope to use. We like the business-sized envelopes that close at end with a looping string (We got ours at Paper Source). It’s kind of like getting a photo from an old-fashioned photo lab. If it bugs you that the card seems lost within the envelope, you could fold it up inside a holiday note printed on letter size paper!
  
  
• This card is featured in a fun new book that’s just out in stores now: “Merry Christmas From…”. (The book is full of fantastic card ideas, all made by the people who sent them. It’s a great source of inspiration for doing your own thing!)
• You could do this every year and make it a tradition. It’s really fun to figure out how to fit into the booth as your family grows!

february 13 creative cards, on cardstore.com

• Check out our coordinated collections for the holidays. Send a party invitation, photocard or greeting card, and thank you cards—all in the same style. It's like having your own, personal graphic designer!
• Write your own message and add your own photos to any card design with cardstore.com’s easy-to-use online editing tools.
• cardstore.com will even take care of the addressing, stamping and mailing for you, with no extra charge for the service. (Stamps are not included in the card price).
• It’s an environmentally-friendly way to do printed greetings. They only print the quantity you need, so there are no leftover cards, and they are mailed directly to you or your recipients… no fossil fuels to get the cards or you to the store.

And last but not least, remember: it doesn’t necessarily have to happen in December! You could knock something out this weekend and have it in the mail before Thanksgiving. Or just give yourself a break until the week after Christmas and send out a New Year greeting instead!