mixed and matched

Well, the I Heart Art Mixer Match was a success!

photos from the etsylabs flickr site

It was held at a swank furniture/design store downtown called Design Within Reach.

We had an opportunity to practice our pitch and show our cards to sixteen local retailers. An exciting number of them expressed interest in carrying our cards!

Here, we are talking to Dillon, from the Museum of Contemporary Craft.

The whole event was pretty low-key. Based on the "speed dating" model, we had two minutes with each of the vendors to describe our cards and ourselves and to see if we could make a match. The event was sponsored by Etsy, I Heart Art, and somehow PNCA was involved, too. It was great to see so many familiar faces.

The Portland art community is fairly small, and as it turned out, we had already met many of the vendors at various boutiques, parties, and barbeques around town! (Hopefully, this will work to our advantage.)

We'll keep you posted if we get into any more stores.

Wish us luck!

it's the little things

Things have been going well lately, here at Darling Press.

We have been busy finishing up a bunch of small projects. We printed up some labels for a local sculptor and professor at PNCA, Frank Irby, who recently has taken to making amazing, custom, hand-crafted ukuleles! Basically, without being asked, I took it upon myself to design him some labels and print them up.


Two good things about working at an art college are access to amazing artists like Frank and access to materials that we otherwise wouldn't even think of. Who knew that wine labels are printed from huge rolls of adhesive material five thousand feet long? Three entire rolls were donated to the school, and we were given permission to use what we need... woot! The result: fancy self-adhesive labels to replace the ink-jet-on-typing-paper labels Frank had been using. His ukuleles will be cherished for generations, I thought it appropriate that his labels should last as long as his artwork.

In addition to these tiny pieces, we have finished some business cards/hang tags for our friend, Ruth! Ruth made Alia's wedding dress, and last fall Ruth was awarded second place in Portland's Junk to Funk Trashion Show! She's pretty fancy, and we were honored to design something for her. This was our first attempt at die-cutting, and it was a crucial test for our press (and our ability to operate it). The whole deal was surprisingly easy, and we are very excited about doing more in the future. We already have received another request for some fancy business cards!


And finally, one more little announcement: we were selected to take place in the I Heart Art Mixer-Match next month at Design Within Reach! We will be given the opportunity to pitch our wares to twenty local vendors who may decide to carry our cards. Wish us luck!


All the best, Jason