since i attended the nc state fair last october, i have been OBSESSED with what i saw in the rose competition tent…
roses of all colours from almost perfect, to perfect, to downright wilty… all in the same vase, neatly arranged on a funky blueish coloured wooden display stand. i’ve painted quite a few tributes to it over the past year. here’s where i landed with it today. and then of course i had to see it as a repeat pattern - and so shall you!
when my friend shannon asked me to paint a portrait of the house her friends just bought, i was over the moon! i love painting houses!
when i first painted this, i painted the windows black because that’s kind of how they looked in the reference photo. when it was almost all done, i looked at it and thought the house looked dead. i went back and re-painted the windows blue and had to redo all the window detail. but i feel much happier with it now! i also had considered doing some kind of floral or fern embellishment, but ultimately decided on oak leaves because the house is in raleigh - the city of oaks! :)
i hope i’ll have an opportunity to paint more house portraits in the future.
my bulk pin order arrived last week and they all look soooo freaking good! they’re officially ready for wholesale & retail customers. the maniki-neko turned out a bajillion times cuter than i imagined. i love the little dragon fruit too! it’s just so nice holding these things in my hands. i think this is along the lines of what i wanted to do myself with resin a couple of years back, but just could not achieve the nice, polished look i was going for. plus it took way longer to make resin charms by hand. plus it gave me headaches (and probably a small dose of cancer). these pins are professionally manufactured and uniform and and and and… i am just so happy!
i don’t know of anyone else in my stationery/gift circles making acrylic pins right now, so i hope that shop owners won’t feel hesitant to accept a new medium for pin cuteness. i just really did not feel that the enamel pin format was right for my hand painted art! and you know what? i feel proud of myself for thinking outside the box and not just making it work with what everyone else was doing. other people are making cool af enamel pins. i’ll make cool af acrylic pins. boom! problem solved! everyone’s making cool stuff!
guys guys guys! i finally made pins! but i couldn’t bring myself to do enamel pins. i have thought about it for years and years, but i couldn’t really make up my mind about how to convert my existing hand painted work to an enamel pin friendly format…and trying to make something to fit a different mold or just like jump on a trend was not of any interest either… but at some point about a year ago i had the thought to make acrylic pins instead. and then THIS year, i finally got my shit together and ordered some!
my samples arrived last week and they are so cute and i’m so excited. they look professional as hell and i love that they’re like little miniature pieces of art you can wear. for the samples, i only ordered 3 styles, but i just placed a bulk order today to include 2 other designs. since probably no one reads this, i don’t mind spoiling the surprise and telling you that the other two are a lucky cat and a dragon fruit!
i’ve had such a good response to these pins so far and i just can’t wait to keep making more new stuff and sharing it with people. <3 here’s a photo of my pins amongst some of my personal favourite pins by other brands including Near Modern Disaster, Old English Company, Naoshi Sunae, and Greenwich Letterpress.
You can order the acrylic pins in my online shop! <3 Please contact me if you’re interested in wholesale!!
hi internet. i feel like no one reads blogs anymore… or at least i know i don’t. but here i am. writing to the abyss!
it’s been almost a year since i shared anything on this little page of my website. i’ve been busy!
after the stationery show in 2018, i did a lot of local pop up markets to try to offload inventory and get my art out there. out where? anywhere! out of my house. my business continues to grow (slowly! but it is growing each quarter!), and i had my first dream die in the form of paper source abruptly dropping my “miss ewe” card from their line after a year of steady reorders of hundreds of cards at a time. i was surprised and bummed out about that, because after they talked me down on my wholesale pricing…driving me to order a shit ton of stock to get a better printing price to improve my margins…they stopped reordering with no warning and then had the fucking audacity to email me (and lots of other small businesses in similar situations) in december, apparently not realizing that i wasn’t a current artist with them anymore, and ask me for $250 for them as a credit to open new stores. if you’re asking yourself “wait…what?”… all i can say is, yeah. i don’t know either. it’s fucked up. go big, but SHOP SMALL. always learning, i guess! the worst thing is, because i am an idiot, i have a couple hundred of this fucking card i’ll never go through unless my business really takes off in ways i do not anticipate. i won’t give up, but, it is definitely a bummer.
to be totally transparent with you, abyss, i cannot really afford to go do the stationery show in nyc this year…which starts sunday. i have FOMO because i have met some really wonderful people and had some wonderful opportunities come up through that event, but i am also glad to take a little time to reflect and continue to create. i would love to go back to the trade show next year… after three times exhibiting, each year better than the last, i still have not made back the money it costs to be there. i can’t tell if my shit sucks or my audience just hasn’t seen me. i hope it’s the latter.
so, this year, instead of the trade show, i’m planning to try to keep a leaner inventory to avoid the paper source style loss, and put more energy into some tangible communications with stores which will hopefully result in finding my people. <3 if that brought you here, hi!
i’ve also been really into pattern making in recent years, so i’m planning to launch some more patterns on my spoonflower page. i wonder how people get into designing patterns for, like, legit fabric companies. ahhhh the spark of a new ambition!
i just finished 9 new greeting card designs to launch with NSS/NYNOW. with this release, i’m mainly exploring some new pattern/floral designs, living my dragonfruit dreams, and filling in some gaps to try to give the people what they want (i didn't really have any "congratulations" cards before, aside from "you did a thing" which has been a great seller, and i think covers every accomplishment, but variety is the spice of life or whatever so now there are more options). oh also… at local markets, people are always turning my cards around to see the back…maybe looking for a price? but i’ve also started printing patterns on the backs to give people something to look at. because, why the hell not? all the same pattern for now, but it’s exciting and fun and i love it and i hope you do too. can’t wait to sell all the old stuff i have on hand and reorder it so i can reorder with the new patterns!
anyway, here are my new card designs!! <3 they’ll be in my online shop and ready for retail/wholesale this sunday, on feb 3! <3
my pals at postable asked me some questions and i gave them some answers! if you'd like to know more about me and my artistic journey, and the things i think about while i'm at the dentist, check it out! (by clicking the picture or link below the picture, yo.)
also... disclaimer... i was so excited to answer these questions and gave some pretty detailed answers, and then i checked some other artists' questionnaires and they were all, like, one word answers >.< lol sorry, i'm totes strugglin' to play it cool and keep it simple on the internet.
NSS is only a couple of weeks away, but i'm feeling calmer than usual pre-show.
i'm excited to share my pre-show mailers with cool stores i've either personally visited or found online and think might be a good fit for my stuff. if you landed here because of that, hi!! i hope to see you at NSS! if you're not attending the show, i'm still excited to share my new products with you soon! :)
each envelope included with my mailers was hand-painted (just like all my desings) and features a floral pattern based on a repeat pattern i recently painted and made into fabric.
this year for NSS, in addition to making a bunch of new greeting cards, i've pared my card line down a bit, removing some designs i loved that just didn't sell well over the past few years, and reworking some designs that i felt could use improvement. i'm also introducing handmade chiffon neck scarves this year... below is a preview! there will be 6 different styles all from desings i've hand-painted. can't wait to share more soon!
we're about two months away from the national stationery show and i made the mistake of looking at the NSS2018 hashtag only to discover a design idea i released in 2015 prominently featured among the most recent posts. but it wasn't my design... it was someone else's image with my concept.
so immediately my heart sank ... #1, self doubt, is my idea so basic that lots of people thought of it too? ... #2, invisibility issues, since my brand is still pretty much unknown as fuck, are people going to find this other person's design first and think i copied their stuff? ... #3, business fear, are they going to be more successful than i am with my own dumb idea?
anyway, i'm trying not to be too bummed about this. it's a 3 year old idea of mine... it's a now very trendy creature... it is certainly not god's gift to the greeting card industry. it may have been low hanging fruit... but damn!
how do you deal with this feeling? my decision is to whine for a second on my blog that no one reads and just keep making stuff because i love making stuff. i know i didn't copy this person's design. i looked at their products and since they appear to make 100% animal pun items, i don't think they copied my design either. i think maybe it's just a concept that's out there like pineapples and unicorns and fucking monstera leaves. and i can't help what other people think. i can challenge myself to create more things that are uniquely my own which is something i've definitely been doing as my art has evolved over the past few years.
here's my design by the way. i'm not going to link to the other person's because i don't want to imply that they did copy me... but... picture a narwhal taking up the same space and facing the same direction on a card but surfing and the text says "have a gnarly birthday." not identical. but not too far off.
yesterday i decided to make some paper flowers during silence's naptime. i've been extremely interested in creating ultra fancy, extra beautiful, super surreal paper flower arrangements and garlands for my house for QUITE some time... but seeing a recent walk through of amy sedaris' "at home with amy sedaris" set pushed me over the top with a burning desire to do it like RIGHT NOW. so i found a tutorial on martha stewart's site of course and made a lovely little arrangement while the sleet and rain fell here in raleigh yesterday afternoon.
aaaaaaaand i'm obsessed.
ok! i'm super excited to announce that updating my sticker app for imessage was about a bajillion times easier than creating it from scratch, so! i have just submitted an update with like 15 new stickers to the itunes store!! check it out!
apple users: search "tylre stickers" in the app store and have fun!
i'm starting to think really hard about new products i want to make next year, and designs i thought were awesome but need to cut because they didn't resonate with the masses the way i hoped. i wonder if it's because i failed to get them in front of the right audience, or if they're just not as relatable to people who buy & send cards? probably a third thing, like i'm just so ahead of my time? my very sweet father told me that last week. i do believe it in some ways.
anyway! all this to say i put some stuff on SAAAAAAALE in my shop because, as much as i love it and am proud of it, i am either planning to rework it because i have a better visual for the message, or it's just going to disappear. think of it as...limited edition, collector's stationery. once it's gone it's gone. it's hard to say goodbye but i have some other great ideas i need to get out there and i just can't keep this shit in stock anymore.
i had a kinda bummer weekend so during silence's nap i painted & animated this cute cat throwing confetti! i'm planning to make it into a lenticular print to debut at the purr cup cafe pop up december 3! i hope it brings others as much joy as it has brought me!
exactly ten days ago i found out one of my favourite artists, rebecca chaperon, had released a sticker pack for imessage containing a handful of her amazing illustrations in sticker form... of course i immediately rushed to buy it... and it's been so fun! like having her sublime paintings in my hands at all times! then, of course, i was like "wait... i should do this with my designs!"
so i did.
lol. guys........
i was like "yeah, sure, i can hack that!" which is exactly how i approach LITERALLY EVERY SINGLE CHALLENGE THAT COMES MY WAY which is LITERALLY DUMB lol i am so dumb. but also i enjoy the struggle, i like making my brain hurt, i like learning things. and you know, yolo.
i spent the past 10 days chipping away bit by bit at making this app for your enjoyment... i reset passwords, i downloaded applications, i agreed to a shit ton of long documents i didn't read, i updated iOS's (kill me), i spent $99 to become an app developer, i scratched my freakin' head, i googled HARD when things didn't work like they did in the quick tutorial videos and blog instructions i found for making a sticker pack, i got ALL UP ON them forumz and read all the comments, i restarted shit, closed & re-opened apps, waited forfuckingever for simulators to load, spent days trying to find workarounds for their absurd glitches, downloaded other applications .....and...finally..... FINALLY! got my app submitted.
during this time it became apparent that my fav artist girl totally appears to have had some other entity create her sticker pack for her because they also apparently made some other cool sticker pack for some other cool artist.
but anyway. GUYS. i did it. search for "tylre stickers" ! share your screenshots with me on instagram @tylrepaper <3
my best friend hyunoo moved from birmingham, alabama to DC after graduating college in 2008. i've been heading up there to visit him at least annually ever since, and every time i'm up there i specifically request making a special trip to paper source. for years, YEARS before i even thought of starting my own stationery business, i've been wandering through the paper source store in alexandria, VA with the dreamiest of dreamy eyes... just basically getting lost in the cuteness and feeling so inspired to make things and share art with people.
it wasn't really until i started getting involved in the stationery world that i realized what a big store paper source is... and that they actually carry cards from other small businesses like mine! so since i launched my business, it had been a dream of mine to work with them... and this year my dream came true (slash hard work and persistence paid off? however you choose to look at it)! i'm so thrilled to share that one of my cards is now available at paper source! after packaging and labeling over 600 copies of this card all by myself... i had the teary eyed privilege of visiting it in its new home at paper source this past week! i've also already had friends in seattle, WA and (you guessed it!) alexandria, VA send me photos of themselves with my card in the store. i'm feeling so proud and accomplished and delighted! going to try to hang on to this feeling for a while.
i took the original painting to paper source to see how far she had made it in the world <3
i heart animal puns <3 ~ you can snag this card from my etsy store OR AT YOUR LOCAL PAPER SOURCE!!! OMGGG! <3
eee! eight new cards just ddddropped on my etsy shop! i'm so happy with how these turned out! i hope you love them too! <3
