Well, this is exciting! We finally decided to bring
Popote into the blogging world, in hopes that it helps us generate more cards n' things to sell. We each have our own blog that we struggle to update, so we'll see how this goes. First off, Hello amigos!
Here's a brief summary of where Popote has taken us, and what we hope it becomes:
Our first release out into the world came at
SF Zine Fest where we had a table set up with our cards and a few home decals.
It was an exciting time for us, considering we stayed up until four in the morning making sure everything was put together, and in its nice little cello sleeve. There weren't too many crafts at this event, but it seemed like a good thing; it let us branch out to a different audience and get feedback. We had a few buys, and lots of questions being asked about how we make our cards. Do you want to know how Popote makes their cards, and why they are so unique?
1. We sketch out the designs, scan them and then turn each line into a vector line
2. The color of vinyl that we're going to use on the card for the design gets chosen
3. The vectorized design gets put through a vinyl cutting machine (like a printer
except it has a small blade instead of ink thats cuts the design onto the roll
of vinyl that we've feed the machine)
4. Once it's done cutting, we have a whole sheet of vinyl that needs to be picked by hand
using an x-acto knife
5. The designs are picked out, topped with a sheet of contact paper, then carefully placed
on the card stock
6. The back of the card is then stamped using our hand carved Popote stamp, and ready
to share with you
Following the event, we quickly put all our cards and decals on an ESTY shop for anyone
to buy, which you can shop at here. We've since been working on new designs and going about
making Popote a real business. The paperwork end of it seems somewhat stressful, but it's
proving to be exciting at the same time. We've always been really creative people that have
loved spending the time to make things and give them away, so it was only a matter of time
that we got our act together to form Popote!
Junia and I have been wanting to come up with another squid design ever since we completed our very first card, Squidigree. We wanted to come up with a design that could be used for any occasion. We had "wedding card" in mind but also had "happy birthday". As you can see (from these lovely photos we took in our back-slash-front yard) we decided to use the mint on copper color combo as a happy birthday card while the other more neutral color combo, was going to be left as a blank card. 
