Eclectic Design Choices Launches New Note Card Product Line

As I mentioned in this month's newsletter, the Arlington Museum of Art has debuted a new line of my blank note cards in their gift shop. While the size of the note cards is the same as ones that I have been selling, the artwork, the paper, the printing and the packaging are all new.

I also shared in the article that I had been interested in producing boxed sets of note cards on heavier paper stock for some time. I like the medium weight paper that I print on with my laser printer at home, but it is near the upper limit of paper weight that I can print myself. In order to offer boxed sets of note cards I also needed to find a way to speed up the printing process as I have to feed the card stock one at a time on my laser printer. I had investigated a few full service printing options in the past but the price points and run sizes had never been in the range that would work out to allow me to keep my pricing where I wanted it. The missing pieces of my "how do I make this work" puzzle finally came together late last year.

A fellow artisan gave me a lead last November that I intended to follow up on after the first of the year when my show season was behind me. However, after attending docent training for the Arlington Museum of Art's upcoming Modern Masters exhibit just after receiving this lead and mentioning my Psychedelic Gazelle note card to the gift store's buyer, I was asked about boxed sets of cards. I scheduled an appointment and brought in some examples of my photographic art that tended towards pop. Some of it was selected for individually wrapped note cards on the stock that I print and others were selected for an anticipated boxed set of cards.

Two of my images for the boxed set, whose colors complemented each other, only needed to be cropped to the proper aspect ratio for my note card layout and tweaked a bit to ensure the colors would print well on matte paper instead of the photo paper that those photographic art images had previously been printed on. The third image of a dragonfly required quite a bit more work however. The dragonfly image was already pretty psychedelic, however the colors were way off to make a cohesive set. I was asked to see what I could do to get some purple into the image and match the color scheme of the other two cards. I came up with two versions, one with a lighter dragonfly on a dark background and the other with a darker dragonfly on a light background. Initially one of the two new color schemes was picked to make a set of nine cards, however once I received my test prints of all four potential new cards it was decided to put together a set of eight using all four images.

Those test prints sold me on the print shop I had been given the lead to. The colors were amazing, even better than my printer at home. The paper was a wonderful, heavy card stock. The only thing I was missing was proper packaging. Luckily I knew one of my other suppliers carried this type of product. I placed orders for clear boxes to fit sets of eight note cards with envelopes and a small print run of the four new note cards. Each set in the AMA gift shop contains two each of the four images. I put a different image at the top of four boxed sets so I could show what images come in a set in one photo.

After the Modern Masters exhibit comes to an end on February 21, 2016, I plan to offer boxed sets of these images. However when I do, I will sell sets of six cards, three each of two images. In order to purchase all four images outside of the museum, you would need to buy two different sets of six cards instead of one set of eight currently available at AMA.

Dependable Daylilies

Some of the most dependable non-native plants in my landscape are clump forming hybrid daylilies. Daylilies are adaptable to a wide range of conditions and hardiness zones. In catalogs they are often shown as adaptable from zones 4 through 9, however some daylilies can be even be found for zone 1 or up to zone 11. Some cultivars have been developed to withstand colder winters, drier conditions, etc., so it is a good idea to source your daylilies locally if possible or read the mail order descriptions in detail to see if a particular variety is likely to do well in your area. And oh my, the different varieties that are available! You can find short through tall, early to late blooming, and evergreen to name a few different characteristics, each in a rainbow of colors. Some of my favorites are the very ruffled edged varieties whose edges are outlined in a contrasting color.

One word of caution however, there is one species of daylily that was introduced to the US 100-200 years ago that while well adapted (good), it is very invasive (bad). It is known as the common orange daylily or Hemerocallis fulva. This plant spreads aggressively, in my experience, by underground rhizomes and will quickly form an ever widening dense mat that crowds out other plants. I definitely discourage its use, but with so many other amazing hybrids of adapted, non-invasive daylilies available, this is no hardship.

The daylily varieties that I have in my zone 8 garden are very dependable bloomers. I have early and late bloomers as well as others that will even rebloom. Daylilies are very drought tolerant. I have found that the darker colored flowers will fade some in direct afternoon sun. While daylilies do need a half day of sun to flower reliably, you can plant your darker colored ones where they will be shaded in the afternoon to avoid this. Each bloom only lasts one day, however the plants send up stalks with multiple buds that open over a long period. All in all, my hybrid daylilies are beautiful, low maintenance and very well behaved, increasing in size very slowly and don’t threaten to take over their neighbors.

If you are not currently growing daylilies in your garden, I encourage you to try this low maintenance beauty. Be forewarned however. You can become addicted to continually adding new varieties once you realize how easy they are to grow. Your garden could become overrun with them, not because any one plant takes over but because you keep finding different beauties to add to your garden. If for some reason you have no room in your garden for daylilies, you can still enjoy their beauty through my photographic art daylily images on bookmarks, note cards and matted prints.

Summer Jewels for the Garden

A challenge that faces low water usage gardeners during the dog days of summer, where rainfall is sporadic, is how to add color to your garden when your plants want to go dormant throughout these hot, dry days. One solution I have found are rain lilies of the genus Zephyranthes.

These hardy bulbs send up flowers when the weather is hot and a passing summer shower temporarily brings welcome relief from a dry spell. Their flowers range from a larger pink variety to crocus like blooms of peach, yellow and white, with the white ones being the smallest. The pink ones are usually the first to send up buds, followed soon by the others to create a riot of cheery color. This delightful burst of color lasts from a couple of days to a week depending on the weather conditions.

Rain lilies will develop into larger clumps as the bulbs naturally divide. If you let the seed heads mature, they will also propagate from seed. An interesting note, when the pink rain lilies reseed, they produce the smaller bright yellow rain lily. All of the others seem to come up true from seed. Therefore if you want to share your pink rain lilies, you must divide the bulbs.

When rain lilies are not in bloom, their strap like leaves provide a spot of green. If you have a particularly long dry spell, these grassy clumps may almost disappear. The foliage will also disappear with a frost and then reappear as the weather warms in the spring.

Plant Zephyranthes and you will be treated to treasure chests of colorful jewels gracing your garden shortly after you are lucky enough to catch a summer shower.