The Carousel Palette Card Story

Just a block off Main Street in Downtown Littleton, Colorado sits a historically designated house built in the late 1800’s. Inside this small, two story house is an art studio where students have gone to brush up on their painting skills since the mid 1980’s. The studio is called The Carousel Palette and it is in this studio where our story begins.

Laurie Harbert, the owner of The Carousel Palette Art Studio and an art teacher since the early ‘70’s, decided she needed to teach her painting classes about selling their work. After all, closets were over flowing, walls were crowded, and basements were stacked with paintings created by her many students. In the fall of 2002 she tackled the first project which was a wall calendar. Due to the time sensitive nature of the calendar, it had limited success. The following fall, another project was tackled and consisted of printing sixteen different note cards. The cards were popular among friends and family members of the students and there was limited success in selling the boxed sets. In August of 2004, 5,470 cards were printed representing thirteen artists who painted at the Carousel Palette. The artists then manned a booth at Littleton’s Western Welcome Week Street Fair where the cards were sold. The next weekend the cards were offered at a Student Art Show held at the Carousel Palette.

Based on the successful sales from the two events, Laurie saw the opportunity before her and knew she couldn’t build a card company on her own. She needed partners and she asked another artist, Molly Miller, to join her. Soon they were renting booth space at a local craft mall, buying card racks and installing them in local art supply stores, and calling businesses to ask them to carry note cards. They knew they were on to something when the well respected Tattered Cover Book Store agreed to carry their line of cards.

Early on in the adventure Laurie met a local printer who specialized in artwork reproduction. The quality of the note cards he produced and his steadfast encouragement spurred the trio on to set up a company, design a website and enroll in the Uniform Code Council so they could have their own bar codes on their products.

Soon they discovered that many artists wanted to reproduce their work and sell it but didn’t want to take the time away from their art production. It wasn’t long before the group of artists they represented grew to nearly 40 and their card catalog held over 200 images. Calls come in daily from people interested in a variety of products, all of which the girls are willing to tackle.

From the beginning sparkle of an idea the focus of the company has been to bring joy to the artist, the purchaser, and the receiver of these original reproductions. Quite simply put, they want to bring joy back to the mailbox.