Card Designer Spotlight: Spaghetti & Meatballs

The Card Designer Highlight is a sequence that includes unbiased makers whose greeting playing cards you’ll find in Paper Supply shops. Meet and be impressed by a brand new designer each month on our weblog!

Meet Marie Castiglione, the designer and proprietor of Spaghetti & Meatballs LLC, identified for cooking up witty and splendidly humorous playing cards, even in heartbreak. Discover out about how her arduous work, fast pondering, and card-making pastime changed into a profession, right here.

How did you start your card-making profession?

I truly began my card-making profession after I was an artwork director at Bloomingdale’s in New York Metropolis! I labored within the promoting and style division for 10 years designing journal advertisements corresponding to Vogue, Harper’s Weird and Elle in addition to all of the out of doors media in NYC. Have you ever ever seen an advert on prime of a taxi or bus cease? That was me! I did this job for 10 years and cherished it. However whereas I used to be there, I grew to become the go to individual within the workplace to make a boss or co-worker a birthday card! One way or the other the phrase obtained out that I used to be artful and fast! So if it was somebody’s birthday, they’d job me with a “pressing matter” and ask me to whip up a card for them, have the entire advertising and marketing division signal it and throw a final minute shock party within the convention room for them at 1pm! I began to fall in love with it. I cherished rapidly arising with a theme, witty copy line and shocking them with a card that pulled straight from their persona! I cherished seeing individuals’s faces gentle up realizing that card was fully impressed by them. They weren’t simply playing cards you’d throw away both. Folks used to indicate me years later how they’d preserve these playing cards tucked away of their workplace drawers as a result of it was a snapshot of an period: outdated coworkers signing it, wishing them properly, it was like an outdated yearbook!

In 2017, I began my first Etsy Store with 6 designs. I rapidly uploaded 6 playing cards within the store so I may apply to a cool craft truthful coming to Brooklyn referred to as Renegade and shockingly I obtained in. This was my first actual deadline. For years, I had been making playing cards and giving them away to coworkers or relations! This was the primary time I needed to sit down and design a line of playing cards that weren’t catered to a selected individual however could be generic sufficient to promote, but confirmed my persona and humor. I had 6 weeks to make a line of playing cards and put together for this craft present. In the meantime it was my busiest season at Bloomingdale’s, and I used to be at a 2 week photoshoot on a regular basis capturing movie for our largest Fall marketing campaign. However after I was on set, I’d consider copy traces and pictures to pair it with, jot it down on a serviette or pocket book and after the shoot day was over, take a taxi again to my work workplace on 53rd and third Ave and design playing cards til midnight or 1am. Then be again on the photoshoot the following morning by 9am and do it once more. I did this for weeks and was a zombie. However I used to be so impressed to place out my first line of playing cards and exhibit at my very first flea market in Brooklyn. In the long run, I designed a line of 75 playing cards J

After that first present in Brooklyn, I always saved including and subtracting to my line. I used to be always placing myself on the market and doing craft exhibits throughout New York Metropolis on the weekends. Artist and Fleas in Brooklyn, Phoenicia Flea in Williamsburg, Queens Craft Brigade in Astoria, so many!! Some exhibits had been profitable and a few had been flops. Some exhibits I made cash, and a few I spent extra in taxis and ubers to get there then I did on the present lol. However it was all a part of the method. You possibly can’t have a look at one present and hyper focus in your efficiency on the present. It’s important to preserve placing your self on the market, and making an attempt totally different recipes to see what works for you. It’s a protracted sport. For me, I met a very cool stylish named Kate from Fast Brown Fox at a flea market in Brooklyn. She was type sufficient to inform me concerning the paper trade and helped me begin fascinated about my pastime as a profession and she or he was the primary one to inform me concerning the Nationwide Stationery Present on the Javit’s Middle. And that was the present that was the sport changer for me and my enterprise. It took my enterprise from a pastime to a profession!

The place do you draw inspiration from? Meals? Pop Tradition? Timeless Motifs? Playful Puns?

I draw inspiration from all kinds of various issues. I’m a giant feeler! I really feel issues deeply, as many artists doJ It’s our specialty. So I pull from actual life occasions on a regular basis. My specialty is heartbreak! I like with the ability to discover humor in every part. Generally I consider myself because the Taylor Swift of stationery- nobody is

off limits! Yearly, I get my sister and girlfriends in a single room with limitless wine and booze to brainstorm concepts. We discuss dangerous dates, good dates, and every part in between! The icks of courting! Issues solely girlfriends discuss at late-night sleepovers. I’m additionally impressed by hip-hop music, early 00s nostalgia, minimal design, and Drake lol.

What does your day seem like as a card maker and designer?

All my days are totally different, however usually I begin my days off with catching up on emails. Sipping on my Starbies! As soon as I put in just a little laptop work and ensure all my jobs are operating easily, I’m all the time out and about doing various things. Generally I’m pulling orders in my studio, typically I’m operating to my native printer to choose up some playing cards, typically I’m assembly with a possible consumer to do a collab, typically I’m in Dwelling Depot selecting out paint colours to design my subsequent tradeshow sales space, typically I’m at my accountant’s workplace going over numbers. It all the time relies upon! However that’s really what I like about working for myself, each day is totally different. I’m not glued to my laptop display screen for 10 hours a day like I used to be at my company job. I decide and select my very own hours. If I really feel like taking a random Wednesday off as a result of I would like a psychological break I can. If I select to sleep in and press snooze I can. If I resolve to go to completely satisfied hour at 4pm, I can. However with all that freedom does come loads of self-discipline. I normally work 7 days per week, even when it’s just some hours every day. I do loads of make amends for Saturdays and Sundays when my e-mail is quiet. I work loads of late nights after I’m preparing for a launch. And so usually it’s arduous to carve out “actual” trip time. However both approach, I’d studying to stability work and life alittle extra day-to-day and I all the time knew I used to be minimize out for working for myself in the future.

What’s your most popular medium?

I’m a graphic designer by commerce, so my brief reply could be that! I additionally am a freehand artist so I can draw and paint, so loads of my concepts will begin with a really fast sketch in my pocket book however I then instantly go into InDesign an Illustrator. I labored in these packages on a regular basis at Bloomingdale’s so it’s second nature for me. I can draw or sketch something on the pc in a couple of minutes. In my off time, I do love oil portray. Once I was youthful, my sister and I’d take non-public artwork lessons after faculty studying easy methods to oil paint. I nonetheless have a few of these canvases in my house. However now as an grownup who’s all the time making and creating, it’s undoubtedly arduous for me to seek out the time to attract and paint anymore!

What does your artistic course of seem like?

By no means linear, all the time natural! Often begins off with a enjoyable temper board. Chopping out photographs, patterns and magazines to create a vibe. Narrowing a colour palette down for the season. Brainstorming with my sister and girlfriends for concepts/themes. As soon as our concepts are considerably outlined, I’ll do some fast freehand sketches of how I see the playing cards wanting. I’m fortunate sufficient to have some wonderful feminine illustrators who work for me now. I hand off loads of my concepts over to them and they’re able to convey to life my imaginative and prescient with their immense pure expertise. I’ll textual content my sister for some copy concepts. She’s a phrase genius and she will spit hearth again to me 1, 2, 3 concepts in seconds. I take the picture and the phrases and mess around for days till I really feel like one thing is basically full. I sit on issues and let it simmer. I’ll textual content choices over to my bestie group chat and ask them always at midnight, “Which one do you want higher?” lol they put up with me. It’s actually a nonlinear technique to work, however that’s how I’ve all the time been. I like to attract exterior the traces J

What are you most pleased with as a creator and card maker?

It’s arduous to nail only one singular accomplishment. However after I take into consideration this query, one factor that comes proper to thoughts is that I used to be courageous sufficient to step away from a ten 12 months at director place within the style trade and create the life and profession path that I did for myself with no handbook. It was trial and error. Networking to see how different individuals we in a position to make it work. I walked away from every part I labored for: my artwork director title, my single lady house, all of the issues in NY that made me who I used to be on the time. I lived there for slightly below 15 years. That’s the place I spent nearly all of my grownup life on the time: faculty plus 10 years of company life. I give up my job in 2019 and moved again to my small hometown exterior of Buffalo NY and moved in with my dad and mom for two years whereas I obtained my ft up on the bottom! It was very scary and arduous for me to go let go of these issues at the moment. Plus bunking in with the ‘rents!!! However I knew I wanted to be house to take this to the following stage, think about my well being and be surrounded by household.

Outdoors of that, I’m very pleased with my relationship with a few of my massive nationwide chains! I’ve been working with HomeGoods, TJ Maxx and Marshalls constantly for about 4 years now. In addition to the Canadian shops HomeSense, Winners and Marshalls and throughout the pond in London, they’ve a department referred to as TK Maxx. They’ve been so good to me and constantly shopping for my merchandise for each vacation: Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Mom’s Day, Father’s Day and so forth. So that actually is a dream come true.

And a brand new venture I’m very pleased with that has been 2 years within the works and I can lastly let the cat out of the bag is a collaboration with American Greetings and TARGET launching in January 2024! Keep tuned…

Any private tidbits? Particular skills/enjoyable details?

I truly can’t cook dinner Spaghetti & Meatballs lol

“A woman within the streets, a freak in Adobe lol”

Discover Spaghetti & Meatballs playing cards corresponding to Resting Grinch Face Vacation Card, New Yr Who Dis Card, and HoHoHo Vacation Card Set at your native retailer or on-line at papersource.com. For extra inspiration and behind-the-scenes motion, comply with @_spaghettimeatballs_ on IG. 

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