꩜august mail club sneak peek!

preview of august’s pattern paper

girlies and boylies it is officially july. can you believe it? because i cannot.

june was quite the month for me and i really have no perception of time when i’m locked into my creative projects. and since creative projects have now become my whole entire job, it’s been extra difficult to decipher time. but i successfully launched my first month’s mail club! with some caveats of course. i definitely messed up a few times. okay, i messed up a lot of times.

july’s mini art print

i plan on doing a full write-up of my learnings in launching a mail club, what i’d do differently, etc etc. but i think it deserves a full dedicated entry of its own so we’ll bank the fine details for another day.

today, i wanted to give a little bit of a sneak peek to those who want to follow along. i know some people do not want to know what’s in the letters and would rather be surprised. but it seemed a majority of members wanted to see what they were actually getting. as a member of other mail clubs myself, i actually like a mix of both. i like the idea of knowing what i’d be getting as an overall theme, but would love some surprise elements that i wasn’t expecting. so i’m thinking i’ll do the same for my mail club.

preview of the deco tape stickers

for july’s mail club, i knew that i wanted it to be something related to fourth of july, even though i am in canada now lol and err — well that didn’t feel too universal. although canada day is on july 1st and people do celebrate it with fireworks, it felt a little out of sync for anyone who wasn’t in north america. so i changed the theme of the stickers and patterns so that it was more of a nautical theme. i think it worked out perfectly though. i’m also starting to realize that a lot of what i create is subconsciously something that reminds me of my childhood. like summertime as a kid meant going to the aquariums and playing with sparklers, going outside and catching fireflies.

similarly, the theme for august kind of sparked from my childhood nostalgia of living in west palm beach, florida. i was very young when i lived there, but ever since i was a kid, i had this fascination with palm trees. as a teenager, we moved to los angeles and that’s pretty much where i’ve been up until 2020. and people ask me all the time what i miss most about living there. and my answer is stupid but it’s kinda true: palm trees.

it’s like nostalgia-ception. palm trees remind me of cali. and palm trees in cali reminded me of my childhood in florida. i cannot articulate why i love palm trees so much but my working theory is that they remind me of sideshow bob.

snippet of august’s mini art print

i think the biggest creative / art challenge for me personally, is figuring out my colors. on one hand, i want things to be bright, vibrant, and whimsical. but on the other hand, my personal drawing style is quite minimal and therefore, crazy colors tend to kind of wash out my entire illustration. it may not seem like it, but i spend hours trying to pick the right colors and get really frustrated on changing my mind constantly. and tbh, that’s how i am with stationery in general. if anyone has struggled to pick a journal or planner cover due to being indecisive about what color to pick, please raise your hands in solidarity.

example of august’s notepad paper design

overall, i’m pretty happy with how the designs came out so far. i still have some pieces to work on and i may end up changing some of the colors here. but overall, i really enjoyed working on this one. i also usually have a difficult time in the summer (full on summertime sadness) and working on summer designs in my personal style, just makes the summer feel bearable. it’s been a wonderful reprieve to work on my art again, in many ways.

for next month’s sticker sheets, i’m actually changing it up a bit and doing something a little different.

july’s sticker sheet

august will have some ghosty stickers but instead of dedicating an entire sheet, i’m thinking of die-cutting just a couple of them. i realize that a lot of people who sign up for my mail club are actively in some kind of planner system and i thought, a planner sticker sheet might be more useful!

one of the things about mail clubs is that sometimes they can feel a bit repetitive. i love the clubs that i have signed up for because i genuinely love the artist’s work. but i find myself wondering what to do with post cards and giant vinyl stickers every month. so i wanted to make it so that every letter feels a little different. and since i’m a planner girly, i figured, why not make planner stickers?

what exactly are “planner stickers”?

planner stickers generally have some kind of written prompt on them that are meant to be used for daily / weekly / monthly planner notebooks. they are meant to mark specific tasks or notes that help you create a schedule or organize your life.

since these are still heavily Work-in-progress, i’ll post updates when they’re actually designed and produced. but i really think think everyone will love these new sticker sheets because it will be something different.

other notable changes are for the calendar bookmarks.

july’s calendar bookmarks

for this month, i created a double-sided calendar bookmark and tbh, it was kind of a disaster lol. the black prints should have been sealed in a separate bag (an oversight by me) and ended up smearing from the heat for some people. i’m still reeling from this btw. but lesson learned. i definitely want to add some kind of monthly calendar in each letter and i thought a bookmark would be cute. however, i do think having multiple bookmarks may start to feel redundant to some people, so i decided to change this as well. you’ll still get a calendar for the next month but it won’t be a bookmark. i will leave this part a surprise!

well that’s it for the august previews! i’ll be posting more on socials when all the pieces are produced and the designs are locked in. i hope you guys enjoyed seeing the snippets and if you’re interested in joining for august, you can sign up here!

i still have a few july catch-up letters in stock here as well.

hope everyone has a good start to july.

stay cool and chat soon.

xo, lo