Behind the Scenes... with Cartolina Cards (plus a great giveaway too!)

Ever wondered how designers come up with their ideas? Find out how they get from concept to product with Behind the Scenes. Today, Fiona Richards, acclaimed graphic designer behind Cartolina Cards, takes us into her design studio to show us more - keep reading for a fabulous giveaway for followers too!

Who needs Santa Claus, mince pies and jingle bells on Christmas cards when you can get geisha girls in cherry blossom snow instead?

If the latter doesn't sound like your typical Christmas card imagery, it's because it's not. But that is precisely the point of Fiona Richard's artistic imagery in her magical, wonderland cards where almost anything goes.

"If I really love an Audubon bird, I see no reason why it shouldn't be combined with a Hokusai wave or a Victorian butterfly taken from an old vintage soap wrapper," she says. "By mixing up eras and styles, I can create an authentic look. Hence why I never really 'plan' a composition; to set out to deliberately design a birthday card would stifle the process altogether."

Although Fiona doesn't have a formal design process, she does still work loosely around a three step system. First comes the composition, then the card's occasion (birthday, Christmas, thank you) and finally the text, made up from original type faces and fonts from old documents, which is arranged manually on top of the artwork.

For the composition, Fiona turns to her very own image store, the result of years of foraging in flea markets for boxes of old dusty postcards, abandoned one-off sketches, eighteenth-century illustrations and Japanese wood block prints. Each image is then painstakingly scanned and stored in a massive digital archive. "The archive is my inspiration," says Fiona. "It's so exciting to see the character and imperfection of vintage imagery blown up on my computer screen."

The vintage images are artistically mismatched and layered with Fiona and her husband Doug's own illustrations to create a nostalgic and magical feel - and as an added twist to detail, the back of her cards always have an entirely different design to the front.

She describes her colours as "rich and sumptuous"; they look like deep velvets and inky satins on card - all the colours of an Indian silk stall. No wonder, really, since Fiona's childhood created something of an Indian palette for her inspiration. She grew up in her grandparents old Scottish stonehouse, which was filled with trinkets and treasures from their travels to south Asia.

"As a child, my dressing up box was stuffed with Indian gowns; vintage saris, heavily embroidered kimonos and sparkly veils," she says. "I'd play with an Indian silver tea service, cloisonne platters and engraved cake stands - things I rather took for granted then. But it definitely influenced my art - I've always been drawn to the richness of eastern and Asian art and its antique imagery."

Each card takes Fiona around three intense days to design in her studio, tucked inside her mountainside cottage in British Columbia. "I love the fact that I can do business for all around the world from our quiet cottage by the lake. Living in a small town has really let me slow down and nurture my art without being influenced by mainstream trends."

But living and working in the Canadian mountains isn't all fresh air and hiking - there's a whole business for Fiona and Doug to run (both work side by side in the studio from 8am sharp each morning) and when she's in design-mode, Fiona will work long months often forsaking sleep. Perhaps this goes some way to explain the dream-like quality of her cards?

"I can't go to bed if my head is full of inspiration," she laughs. "But I don't mind - I love my job."

- Cartolina Cards are now available in the UK. Stockists include American Retro, The Cherry Tree and The Barbican. Selfridges will be stocking Fiona's cards from January. Read Fiona's blog here.

Giveaway!
To coincide with the launch of the new-look Her Little Place, I have teamed up with Cartolina Cards to offer lucky readers a gorgeous gift pack, containing notelets, notepads, birthday and Christmas cards.
There are three gift packs to giveaway to Her Little Place followers. For your chance to win, become a follower (click on "Follow me") if you're not already, and leave a comment below with an email address or link to your blog so I can contact you . Winners will be selected at random and will be announced back at my blog in a week. Post your comment before midnight GMT on Tuesday, 17 November, 2009 (that's a whole week to enter!)

Good luck!

(Photography: PR)