I am continuing to fill up my newly opened Etsy shop with more items, even if I’m a bit slow at it.  It takes time to write everything out and prepare photos, still not sure if I’ve got it down yet – in terms of how to present my work.  I’m going to keep at it, little by little – Rome wasn’t built in a day, right?!  Today, I decided to offer a free printable to say thank you to everyone.  Even though Thanksgiving has past, it’s always a good time to give thanks.  We can’t take for granted all the caring people around us and online that help us through our everyday challenges of living our lives and getting through the days, good or bad.  Here’s my way of giving back a little, I hope you like it!

Download Thank You Folded Card PDF

Download Thank You matching Envelope PDF

I designed the thank you folded card and matching envelope above, feel free to download for personal use.  Grazie mille for your support, your thoughts, your feedback…and really just for hanging around so I don’t feel so alone on this creative journey.  Thank you.

While I was sick and pretty much glued to the bed and didn’t get much done except outlining this little acrylic painting…

As I mentioned previously, I also did open up my Etsy shop before getting hit by the flu.  I am continuing to work on adding items to the shop, which surprisingly takes longer than expected.  Just to write out descriptions, get the pictures prepared and such.  Today I added a printable item finally, so please check it out and let me know what you think.  Thanks!

Download the Snowman Stationery Set List Paper PDF

I like the idea of creating as many usable elements as possible in the stationery set, so that it suits all needs.  Can you think of anything else to add in?  For the holidays, I was thinking of place setting paper goods, but perhaps that is a different set altogether that would have invitations, namecards and placemat decorations.  Perhaps color-it-in line drawings for children’s placements?  That was an idea that popped up when I was in the shower, so random!

Otherwise, I was happen to make an order on Moo.com for my holiday postcards with different designs and art work featured.  I am so excited to receive it, although here in Italy the mail takes forever – even if something is sent FedEx or DHL.  I’m crossing my fingers.  In the spirit of looking at past designs and trying to clean up and organize, I decided to go back through all my files from the beginning and finish all those unfinished and abandoned projects.  Or at least look at them again…!  This is going to take some time…

Packaged up some mail, but didn’t make it to the post office.  Started knitting…like 8 rows only…

Started painting and paper collaging some cardboard, then moved to a tiny canvas, all unfinished…

Went back to old illustrations and created some random coloring pages…

I’m sort of wondering what I should do now…

So, besides Art Every Day Month experimentations, I have also been trying to work on my design illustrations.  One of my many goals is to open up an Etsy shop to sell my wares – art prints – stationery – creations of all types.  Since I have so many interests, it’s definitely hard to define exactly what I do, but I know it all starts with sketching out designs.  Having moved to Italy and being foreign to how things work here, I haven’t figured out how to get items produced professionally, shipping and other logistics yet.  I realized that a logical first step could be to provide printable designs for sale and eventually move to already created products that must be shipped.  Printables make me excited also because they can be delivered almost immediately and give you instant results.  You can print what you want to use and as many as you need.  Also from my business point of view, it’s a low upfront cost alternative for someone just starting out a business.  A bit like print on demand, which is vastly becoming an acceptable way of offering up products for sale.

I have offered some freebie printables previously on this blog and through this experience, some research and my own use of the many wonderful free printables out there, I’ve come to a few conclusions.

1. I tend to print out designs that don’t use up too much ink, because I prefer to print on textured or colored paper as an alternative.
2. I love sets of printables, so that I can match up everything such as wrapping a gift, labeling and writing up my card or note.
3. I like the simplicity of just cutting paper in half or quarters and don’t like wasting any part of the paper printed.
4. I totally understand the need for designers label or credit via logo and text, but hope it’s tastefully implemented and not using up too much ink.
5. I also like printables that are customizable – you can type in some text in Adobe PDF before printing.

I haven’t yet figured out number 5, but I worked on a sample snowman stationery set with the other items in mind and would like to offer it as a FREE download.  Tahdah!

Snowman Stationery Envelope

Snowman Stationery Flat Notecards

Snowman Stationery Folded Cards

Snowman Stationery Labels/Tags

Snowman Stationery Paper

I present you with the various printable PDFs for this stationery set – each element labelled above, just right-click and save the PDF to your computer.  I am hoping you can help me by testing it out and seeing what I can improve on, what you like or dislike.  For example, I provide a lot of variation on each sheet, lined and blanked versions.  Perhaps it is better to provide full sheets of one style only, in case a person prefers one over the other, rather than both on the same page that must be printed together?  What about all pages in one file, do you often select print even though you didn’t mean to print out the whole file?  Or are separate files too unwieldy?  What about the fact that I include “designed by tortagialla.com” on everything as a small text rather than my very yellow and ink-soaking logo?

All my designs besides the envelope are designed to be cut in half or quarters exactly, no waste of paper.  It’s important of course to remember to print as high quality as possible on your preferred paper and at full 100% size, as these are designed for Lettered Sized paper.  Although for myself I design on A4 sized paper and would offer those variations for all printables – I love my US and Int’l peeps equally!  I’ve wondered also about the quality of files as these are saved as high quality PDFs specifically for printing at home – pretty big downloads.  Or would smaller sized downloads with less quality be acceptable?

I would love your feedback and thoughts, whatever they might be – let me have it!  Thank you in advance and I hope you can enjoy this stationery set as well.  I drew the little snowman a while back, but added his hat and scarf in Xmas style just for this occasion.  It’s a happy wintery graphic and yes, he does look like he just ate something yummy, doesn’t he?  Hopefully not the little kid who wanted to steal his nose or eyes…hehe.  Grazie e ciao ciao!

I also worked heavily on my royal ladies to finish them up – or at least a first draft of all of them.  I might still change some details, but glad to have gotten this far in the series…I present you with the Countess, the Princess and the Lady!