Hello!
Ah, that fresh blog smell!
Hello! I’m Cariad, and I’m the co-founder of Cardboard Borks with the love of my life, Alex, on the south Devon coast. I’m the goober in the NASA hat, and they’re the beautiful cat boy with the strong arms.
Cardboard Borks is our work-in-progress brand of hand-crafted journalling accessories and stationary. Is that “Etsy sticker store” with extra words? Yes, but wait!
See, we both love journalling to manage our mental health; planning gives me confidence, reflection gives me peace of mind, and it’s a powerful creative outlet for Alex to soothe their anxiety.
We discovered during The Great Indoorsing of 2020 that we had some cool ideas for journalling products that we’d love – and, well, why buy when you can make instead?
But, of course, we didn’t. Lockdown was weird, I was and have been super-busy as a DevOps contractor and Alex started a new job at a gorgeous local beach bar. Last month, though, the stars aligned and imbued us with entrepreneurial energy (i.e. we lost our jobs) so we’re taking a crack at the crafting!
Shopping list 🛒
We already had everything we needed to immediately start designing our stuff – I’m Team Affinity Designer and Alex is Team Procreate – but I haven’t owned a printer since a failed stint of selling photography prints a decade ago, and neither of us has the hand-eye coordination to do a great job of cutting.
So, the shopping list was set: I researched and settled on an Epson ET-8500 for vivid colour prints on thick card stock and a Cricut Maker 3 for knifing the poor things.
I figured we should focus on getting the printer first since I know colour calibration’s going to be a time suck, so I hunted around for the best price and found it at Currys. Their website said our local store had an ET-8500 in stock, so we hopped on the train to go nab it.
An hour later, I showed the staff the screenshot of the ET-8500, told them I was ready to pay and take it away, and… it turns out that Currys don’t stock that printer. They’ve never stocked that printer.
They – to be clear – ain’t got it.
That was a bugger, but the trip out wasn’t wasted. We stopped into the Hobbycraft next door to see if they had any nice paper we could take home rather than leave the city empty-handed. I never expected to find a Cricut Maker 3 at a competitive price, and with a hundred quid of smart materials bundled in!
Sold!
Molly, if you’re out there: thanks for chasing me half-way back to Exmouth after I left my debit card behind! 😅
And bless Alex for letting me snap a selfie as we huffed and puffed back to the train station. ❤️
Home again 😮💨
We’re both pretty extreme introverts so a day amongst the Great British public and riding the rails knocked the fluff out of us. We’ve nested up and left the kit in its boxes for the evening, but I’m planning to unbox it all and share some photos later in the week.
’til then, thanks for joining us at the start of this journey!
