And these are the winners:

1. P06 ‘Dandelion’

A classic one, the dandelion. The card is used for condolences, as well as good luck, just to express your sympathy for someone, to send out wishes,…

Designed by Jolien.

2. A31 ‘happy…’

How cool, this card always appears in our top 10 since it’s launched. You really appreciate the multiple choices for multiple occasions and the humor of this one, I guess?!  Designed by Joachim.

3. A54 ‘cassette fuck you’re old’

Always making people smile, even with the dirty f-word on it.  People just like to be remembered by the good old times when things appeared to be much more simple, especially in uncertain times like these.

4. D12 ‘washing line’

A cute one on place 4! Especially during times like these, when people can not visit the newborns, sending out a card to congratulate the parent(s) on their little, cute baby is pretty much on trend. Designed by Joachim.

5. D25 ‘stork with baby’

Another one for the newborns! I love this one as well, since it combines the more romantic idea of a stark carrying the little baby and people taking pictures with their phone (even a selfie). Designed by Esther.

6. C17 ‘I heart you’

Most of the times the most simple message and drawings are the bestsellers, right?! This is the perfect example! The design is just so simple and that’s what makes it beautiful. Designed by Joachim.

7. A58 ‘Stay wild’

This one on place 7, that always amazes me. I (Jolien) really like the card (I designed it myself ). But I did not think it would turn out to be a bestseller. I guess other people relate to it as much as I do and that fact makes me very positive about the future!

8. C06 ‘hearts’

For all love(rs) out there. An oldie as well, one of the cards designed for the very first series  of letterpress cards we made. By Jolien.

9. D18 ‘alarm clock manager’

Based on our own life (which card isn’t? ) this card is very popular since… it is true! Hahaha. Designed by Jolien

10. A37 ‘i wish you…’

This card appears in our top 10 since forever! Haha. People just like the humor and the possibility to choose a message. Designed by Joachim (or was it Jolien? I do not remember… oops).

And I can not not mention this fun fact:

On place 13: F64 ‘all the other cards were really shit’. Haha. I guess this puts all the other cards, bestsellers and my analysis in perspective.  Designed by Joachim (he designs all the cards with the ‘bad handwriting’ stuff… hihi) 

1. A02 ‘Party Lama’

Well, it might not be the most beautiful drawing I ever made, and I guess it is kind of egocentric to choose a design of myself as the first one in my personal top 10, yes, I know, but i have my reasons. This card is on of the oldest cards of our collection. It still stands strong and even after all these years is one of the bestsellers of 2019. I don’t know how many Party lama’s we sold over the years in total, but it most be around 5000 times. Lots of lama’s partying, right? This lama also symbolizes my self-esteem when it comes to drawing and designing my very own cards. As you might know: I am not a graphic designer or illustrator. I am a sociologist I did not study sketching lama’s whatsoever. No problem at all, apparently, and when I look at this Party lama I know it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what you did or did not study, what your degrees are, how fancy your drawing equipment is (this one is drawn on a very basic & cheap Samsung tablet with a pen we got for free) or how much time you spend on it (10 minutes? Maybe? Even less on this one? ). You earn 1000 of euro’s with a little creator like this Lama having a party.

2. C16 ‘Jij lekker dier’

This one has to have a very high place in my top ten. I am even thinking about getting it tattooed somewhere on my arm or something. Joachim made this ‘lekker dier’ (loosely translated: sexy beast) and somehow it makes me so happy every time I look at it. Joachim might not agree but for me it is the perfect drawing of a crazy little fox, the perfect amount of awkwardness versus skills. Or something that sounds like I know what I am talking about

3. C47 ‘I love you to earth and back’

There has to be at least one card with a blue gradient in my personal top ten of Studio Flash letterpress greeting cards, right? it became one of our key features: printing gradients. I love it, because the result is so beautiful. But I also love our gradients because it is part of our history as autodidacts. I am not an illustrator or graphic designer, and so isn’t my husband Joachim. And we even had no experience whatsoever with printing, especially not with letterpress printing. It is all due to Youtube and Google, many hours online and many hours of trial and error Joachim somehow mastered the printing part of our business. And it is mainly because of our naivety and open-mindedness we came up with printing these gradients. It is our very own technique based on our very own logical thinking and trying out new things.
So why this one with the aliens in space? Its a drawing by our co-worker Esther, and first of all I like the drawing itself. Secondly I really like the reference to the more cliche version of the quote used over here “I love you to the moon and back”. I like it that we came up with a different take on it, laughing a little bit with the over use of the original quote. And I really like the way the earth is almost invisible, it gives the images more depth and makes it more exciting.

4. A53 ‘Confettigirl’

The confetti girl, oh, she steals every heart! It just works, and I love the way the red of her little dress and shoes is not outlined in black. These little details make it into one of my favorites. And since this little confetti girl sells like hell, I guess I am no the only one loving her positive attitude!

5. Z34 ‘Sexy christmas’

I designed this one myself. #proud And I still like it. It’s inspired by an old Playboy cover, if I remember it correctly. I think it’s quite sexy and empowering at the same time. #newfeminism

6. Q02 ‘Happy baby – happy parent’

Oh. This one comes with a long story of how it felt for Joachim and me to become parents for the first time. And how we struggled with it the first months. And how sometimes we still struggle. I’ll skip to the best part: somewhere along the struggles we combined all of the well-meant advice into this simple diagram. Because that’s what matters the most. Oh, and i like the colors. Oh, and I like the fact that it doesn’t say happy baby – happy mommy. I hate it when it’s only about the mommies, like there are no fathers? Let’s just use the more gender neutral word parent ;).

7. F35 ‘Bring on the choco’

It should be my life motto. It isn’t. I need a reminder now and then. This card does the trick!

8. I16 ‘Cat on a grass machine robot’

I like e-ve-ry-thing about this card.I mean, a cat always makes you smile. And one of these grass machine robots, OMG, how funny are they? I don’t know how popular they are in other countries, over here in Belgium people tend to like a well mowed little lawn. Haha. It cracks me up every time I see such a small machine strolling around a lawn. I like the grumpy expression on the cats face combined with the party hat. And I definitely like how you see a line of mowed grass where the robot must have worked its automated magic.

9. C49 ‘Ti amo’

Joachim is not going to like this choice :). I know he is not that into this card, but I am. I like the overall result and I like the fact that we made it together. I drew the spagetti, Joachim drew the horses. And I think that turned out to be very romantic

10. Z51 ‘May all your pinterest dreams come true’

I am a huge Pinterest and Instagram scroller. Never ending Pinterests feeds with dreams and hopes fill my account. I virtually created many Pinterests dream lives, with beautiful houses, several wedding parties, perfectly styled little children, and always cute newborns who never poop or cry. I love the tensions between dreaming and creating your dreams. And how it depends on the lighting, photography skills and styling of your pictures ;). I mean: who didn’t try one of those dreamy pinterest ideas and totally failed at it? And when you did not fail, you took million pictures and posted them all over the place, right? At least I did. But if all your Pinterest dreams did come true, would it make you happy? I don’t think so. So this card comes with a sting, and that’s how I like it.

Nothing! We gained! A lot!
We won the Handmade in Belgium Award for our district (East-Flandres).
We met some really nice fellow makers (you can check other Handmade in Belgium Makers over here!),
got this beautiful award and made friends with Unizo.

But I think the best of all was: we had to pitch our company to a jury.
So we had to take the time to put a few things in words: our values, our story, our goals.

The pitch went well,
and we got some good questions afterwards from the jury that made us think even more about what we want to stand for.
By now I think if we would have to pitch our company again, it would be even more clear, more vision, and even more passion (is that even possible? I don’t know )

This pitch for Unizo gave us that little push of self-esteem we needed to get us further, to make this blog, to get on more stages in real life and virtual.
So thank you Unizo for this award,
and the label.
A label for Belgian Makers ==> loving it!

(photo credits: Unizo)

1. A54 ‘Cassette Fuck you’re old’

2. D12 ‘Washing line’

3. P06 ‘Dandelion’


4. A37 ‘I wish you…’


5. A31 ‘Happy….’


6. D18 ‘Alarm clock manager’


7. C06 ‘hearts’


8. C17 ‘I heart you’


9. A02 ‘party lama’


10. A58 ‘Stay wild’