Nancy Nikko Design

It all started when…

Around 1993 I started selling small handmade greeting cards. This was a time long past, when desk top computers were mostly unheard of and the internet was still waiting to born - at least in its current form.
Because these resources, along with printers, scanners, email etc. - were not at my fingertips, I was a frequent visitor to Kinko's, making copies of images for my cards.

And my marketing plan?

I didn’t have one, I just sent samples off to stores I saw featured in House & Garden magazines. Amazingly, I had about an 85 percent acceptance rate. I was thrilled. The first time I got an order from Nordstrom and then Urban Outfitters I felt I had ‘made it’ in the handmade card world!

At the time, most of the crafted cards found were what I call the 'collage with sticks' variety- very pretty, little pieces of art. Nothing wrong with that, but it wasn't my style. However, I was lucky in that the market for specialty cards was just beginning to open up. It’s typical to find hundreds of unique, quirky and stylish specimens today, but that was not the case thirty years ago.

Life went on and one thing led to another, and that led to a move to California.

I kept my card business going and by this time, I had a computer, printer, internet – all I needed to take my mini card empire into the modern world.

But then somehow my career took a turn. Instead of a card maker, I took a job as a card buyer. I became the Stationery, Gift Wrap and Greeting Card buyer for a mid-sized stationery and bookshop. And I loved it. I slowly let my card business dwindle to more of a hobby and enjoyed the time off from being a ‘maker.’
The change coincided with a particularly frustrating all-nighter of making a batch of 500 cards for a specialty chain store.

One thing nobody tells you about handmade anything is that making things in bulk is not as fun as making one. The creative ‘high’ got lost around number 25, unless you count the fumes I was inhaling from spray adhesive.
And then I moved to the Midwest.

In 2007 I came full circle back to making cards, only this time, I wasn’t assembling them by hand; it was more of a desk-top printed affair, with embellishments added at the end. I was in small stores around the country and it was fun to think of my cards traveling around the U.S.

And then I found out about Etsy.

In 2011 I opened my Etsy store.
To be honest, I hadn’t even heard of Etsy up to that point, a girlfriend mentioned it in casual conversation. She was the kind of person who always wore handcrafted knitwear and bought calendars made on balsa wood. In other words, she was an Etsy customer.

I went home after that lunch and looked up Etsy. Within a few weeks, I had my shop up. Oddly, I didn’t sell cards. I mean, maybe I had a few in there, but I started out designing wedding wine labels and then moved on to labels in general.
And that brings me to the present.

I’ve added a lot of stationery over the years, and bookplates, flat notes, business cards - and many more labels for the kitchen. I like the mix, it keeps me interested in what I do.

As for the design and process, I illustrate much of my own work, but I also use antique illustrations (a passion of mine, both collecting and designing with) and I buy illustrations from other artists as well, if I feel their style compliments mine or its a style that I’m not adept at:)

More recently I’ve begun adding items that compliment my stationery, they fall under the category of interesting, imported or aesthetically attractive office supplies and gifts. I’m a collector and one of the things I collect are vintage paper items, books and typography samples. So anything to do with these might find their way onto this site:)

And even more recently, I picked up my camera again and started seriously thinking about photography - how I can use it to express a different kind of creativity. As I write this, the calendar just flipped to 2024, so we’ll see what the new year brings.

Cheers,
-n.n.