Dear Friends,

I hope you’re doing well. 

I have a bit of news to share. 

A while back, my niece told me that I ought to start a “side hustle” with my “art stuff”. 
And I thought, “Why not?”

Lesson 1 – Never start a venture by thinking, “How hard could this be?” 

The Universe is always listening…waiting to show you just howhard it could be!

All summer I’ve been ordering shipping materials, figuring out shipping, (What a nightmare! I’m sure the people at the post office are totally sick of me!) and learning my way around the world of e-commerce and WordPress and their four hundred thousand million plugins. And all I keep thinking is, “I really just wanna be drawing. Is that iPad charged yet?” 

All that being said — I’d like to formally introduce my shop to you. 

I’ll be selling stationery with my original art, a 2025 art calendar, original art prints, and journaling/scrapbooking stickers.

These items would be great gifts for stationery lovers. For now, the Card Shop includes birthday and thank you cards, as well as blank notecards for keeping in touch. 

The art calendar makes a one-of-a-kind (and, if I may say so myself, beautiful) Christmas gift, as well.

I want to create products that are not only unique but environmentally friendly.  

By using a local printer for the calendar and going there to pick them up, I’ve eliminated the need for shipping. I’ll be moving some of the card printing to this local printer, too.  

Another challenge has been eliminating single-use plastic from the shop. This is harder than you might think.  

Most places that sell packaging for stationery use some form of plastic – clear sleeves or boxes with see-thru windows. I scoured the internet looking for the right thing.  Nothing fit the bill, so I decided to wrap each purchase in beautiful washi (Japanese) paper. This way, there is less waste, and the package looks prettier, too. 

Lesson 2 – learn from past mistakes

On the topic of plastic pollution, I was quite upset with myself for not remembering to tell the printers not to shrink-wrap the calendars (which they did). These are the little things I’m learning along the way and when they happen, I feel like crying.

So much plastic!

I can’t undo it. All I can do is learn and move on.

Another mistake I made was to order vinyl sticker labels. How could I have not seen they were vinyl?

Back to the drawing board. 

After a long search, I found a company that makes paper stickers on Eco Natural paper, using eco-friendly inks. Yay!

Lesson 3 – don’t bite off more than you can chew

I was ambitious and tried to set up international shipping to several countries, as well as domestic shipping. It proved too much for me to figure out right now. 

As soon as I know the US shipping works, I’ll set up the international shipping and let you know when that happens.

Lesson 4 – Understand that nothing is perfect… 

…and reconcile that no amount of fussing over things will make them perfect. Let the small things go. No one will ever notice that that shade of blue is redder than it should be. 

Anyway, that’s all for now. 
 

xoxo

Lisi-Tana

PS You can always access the shop from the menu.

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