It's time again to send out a tea card to friends and family. A tea card is a little card I send out that includes a packet of tea and some news. It doesn't happen every year which makes it special to send out and share with others. For the tea card design for 2026, I was inspired by a charming African animal called the pangolin.
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A tea card is a small tradition that I made up to celebrate my friendships. It deviates from the usual christmas snail mail round-ups because I never send them out around the holidays which creates a fun element of surprise. AND I normally include a packet of tea with it to create a special sensorial experience for the reader. In the letter itself I do a little bit of what everyone does in regular letters: I share stories, write silly ideas, spill new thoughts and ins-and-outs of wherever it is I'm living as an expat.
In my last tea card I honored our arrival to Namibia with a pastel safari design. The tri-folds of the letter collapsed into a layered illustrated landscape. I had a ton of fun creating the whole coordinated ensemble - envelope, letter, sticker, tea card. The coloring was playful and pastel which on hindsight confused some of my readers into thinking it was a baby announcement! Seriously unintended consequences of color choices. Sorry, Momola.
So for this year I decided to follow a little pangolin muse. Why? Because I think pangolins look adorable. And even though it took a while to figure out how to draw them, I think they turned out really cute. (And I'm secretly hoping I can reuse the illustrations to print a puzzle and raise funds for the Pangolin Research & Conservation Foundation.)
Pangolins are small animals - two of the six remaining species are found in Africa. They are some of the only mammals to have existed during the age of the dinosaurs! They are ant and termite eaters with long tongues that unfurl like a party horn into nests to stick and lick up all the ants and termites. They have a outer armor of overlapping scales that look like roof shingles.
Sketches of pangolin curling up by Smarti. Photo of sketchbook page of pangolin sketches by Smarti. Sketch of pangolin shapes by illustrator Smarti.
left to right, 1) sketches of pangolin curl 2) full page of pangolin sketches 3) sketch of pangolin shape @thesmarti
Pangolins walk with their hind legs, torso hunched over with their front claws clasped. I read someone once say a pangolin looks like an elderly person walking out to their garden. It's quite endearing. But took a long while to figure out how to draw them. Thankfully, there is a Netflix movie called Kulu's Journey about a pangolin rescue in South Africa. So I used a lot of reference shots from the movie to draw a pangolin standing, walking, rolling, curling, etc.
For this project, I really loved learning about the pangolin's keratin scales. (Technically they are no different than our hair and nails - but some asian markets consider them a fertility superfood of sorts. ::sigh::) So, after a couple of sketches, I had this brilliant idea to do some iridescent painting of the scales. But then I realized I don't know how to do that. And I lost confidence and started to spiral and procrastinated on other projects.
Illustrated timeline of pangolin sketch attempts by Smarti. Illustration of simple pangolin silhouettes in black and white by Smarti. Illustration of 9 brown pangolins with pink, orange and purple highlights by Smarti.
left to right, 1) first pangolin paint attempts, 2) simple pangolin sketches, 3) final pangolin illustrations @thesmarti
In the end, I had to go back to the original sketches, and simplify. I decided to do a base a chocolate color and then added in purple, pink and orange highlights. Then I crafted half loops for the curving stroke of the scales over it all with a hard pencil. In effect, the painting layer still makes it look like a direct shine on their backside. It still sort of works for what I needed.
I wrote out a quick letter to share the news since my last tea card in 2024, and then scrolled through my list of contacts and wrote out addresses. Ironically, this is the hard part since not everyone is good about updating me their new addresses! I have to do a lot of follow up - "Is this still your address? I hope so because I'm mailing tea cards shortly!" Then a long visit to the post office to stack and send out all the tea cards.
Photograph of a hand writing out a tea card letter on an iPad by Smarti. A stack of pangolin tea cards without the tea packets by Smarti. Stack of tea card envelopes addressed and stamped for delivery by Smarti.
And voila - they are on their way!
simple pangolin 2026 tea card design @thesmarti
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Designing a tea card really tickles me. I love the idea of making paper ephemera that is special and enriching for someone to have and hold. Of course, I do feel connected to someone through the act of letter writing itself. But I like to think that the tea card helps my friends and family be uniquely present in taste (tea), smell (aroma), touch (paper) and sound (playlist) and sight (art/words). It gives people a lovely little art escape WHILE ALSO feeling connected. And that's something worth sharing.
Cheers to keeping snail mail traditions alive,
smarti
I keep a bulletin board over my desk as a way to track dates and projects as well as see inspiration directly overhead as I work. I have this epic collection of business cards, postcards, prints and small inspirational 3d art pieces that I like to mix and match to make an installation for myself. I change it every couple of months and it's a lovely way to spend an afternoon and an instant refresh for my office. Lately, I'm packing up stuff in preparation for leaving Windhoek and I wanted to write an appreciation post to bulletin boards before I strip it clean.
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This is the first house where I've lived that didn't have white walls. It's a taupe or cool grey in all of the rooms and it's really brought a calming neutral sense of comfort that I never experienced before. (I know those colors aren't that interesting, but the feeling of it is surprisingly nice.) So I wasn't quite sure how my bulletin board would look in this room, but I brought cork tiles from Portugal and made a horizontal strip to mirror the length of my desk.
Once I had it in place, I tacked up my rolling calendar on one side (and you can see that I keep track of what I completed in writing on the right margin.) And then I selected a couple of different art pieces in pale muted colors. I used folded paper corners so I could pin them from the backside without damaging the prints. It helps me keep all the pieces straight and gives the board a nice clean look.
PALE: 1) watercolor print of a dear and a doe from Alina Chau , 2) map of Australia designed by Alexander Verhille, 3) postcards of Trevi Fountain in Italy and Barcelona Gaudi Casa Batlló illustrated by Josh Emrich for a board game designed by Unai Rubio called Caper and 4) print of a steaming cup of tea illustrated by Hyuna Lee
There are pieces from random stores, art shows, museum expos, postcards, stationery shops. It's fun to bring different pieces together and mix and match a little collection for myself. I feel like it helps me feel inspired and certainly helps me melt into the season a bit better. Here's some of the different combinations I've made for myself over the years here:
Standing desk, sitting desk, bench in the office of illustrator Smarti with pink tone prints pin Collection of pink prints featuring Fawn Verasunthorn illustration.
PINK: 1) Bicycle button medal that were 3d printed as prizes for a Bike Tour Challenge I crafted in Copenhagen in 2023, 2) Personalized concert invite from the singer/songwriter Gloria del Mar 2025 Heartbreak Series, 3) Shakespeare & Company Cafe printing of Proust Questionnaire, 4) pink lady print from Disney artist Fawn Verasunthorn and 5) a collapsed packaging box of Charlotte Chocolat cookies
Standing desk, sitting desk, bench in the office of illustrator Smarti with green tone prints pin Art prints featuring illustrators Shauna Lynn, Kim Seungyoun and Lorena Alvarez Gomez.
GREEN: 1) small fox stamp on an envelope from a paper store in Amsterdam, 2) playing card from LoisVB, 3) small print of Malarrifsviti from Shauna Lynn (aka ShaunaParmesan), 4) parisian dog postcard by Kim Seungyoun, 5) folded up Curiocity Issue E: Escaping London, a miniature fold-out "mapazine" that my neighbor Matt Lloyd-Rose in Argentina wrote and then designed in a collab with Mike Hall, and 6) print of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz from Lorena Alvarez Gómez
Standing desk, sitting desk, bench in the office of illustrator Smarti with yellow tone prints pin Artboard inspiration featuring illustrations from Lila LeFranc and Dung Ho.
YELLOW: 1) The Singapore Durian Challenge postcard, 2) flower postcard by Lila LeFranc from a stationary company in Portugal, 3) business card from a special handmade object store called Vanishing Point in Copenhagen and 4) print of a girl feeding birds on garden steps by Dung Ho
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I'm striping and packing up the whole kit and caboodle and I'll have to cut my paper collection in half. It's hard to look through all the pieces from artists I love and decide which of them to minimize! But every move is an opportunity to shake things loose and make room for the future. I'm not sure I'll have a bulletin board for a while to come since we might be taking sabbatical. So I'll send gratitude now for the collection collages I got to make. And I'll send gratitude too for how the colors and ideas sparked inspiration into my own projects. I'm so very lucky to have been in the presence of all of these artists on my very own bulletin board.
Cheers to inspiration of paper and to clearing a desk,
smarti
There is a type of meditation called Vipassana which is heralded as the original meditation that the Buddha used to reach enlightenment. I have several friends who have been on Vipassana Meditation Retreats and recommended it. So as part of my self-development this year, I decided to go do a 10 day course near Cape Town. After it wrapped, I spent a lot of time trying to make sense of my experience, so I'm sharing my thoughts as a testament to my current perspective and in the hopes it will be helpful for anyone curious about it.
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Vipassana is a meditation of awareness. It's an old technique that originated in India and then bypassed cultural evolution by being imported to Bhutan as a foreign tradition. (Ah, the sanctity of something that originated somewhere else!) Bhutanese monks protected the dogmatic practice of Vipassana for hundreds of years. The teachings eventually came to a Bhutanese businessman with Indian origins, S.N. Goenka in 1962. Goenka built a consistent teaching model in a 10 days residential program and established non-commercial meditation centers all over the world.
So now "Vipassana" in shorthand is known as this 10-day experience where participants learn the technique in a shared meditation hall while they room and board in simple monk-life fashion in segregated dormitories. The daily schedule is strict with meditation training starting at 0430, interspersed with meal times and rest times until the day ends at 2100. All participants agree to a modest clothing, noble silence (no writing, drawing, gestures, or glances) and staying for the full 10 day experience to learn the technique properly.
Goenka created the course with a series of his audio recordings and video recordings. The audio recordings are played during the day during meditation sessions. The video recordings are played at the end of each night as a way to explain the purpose of the process, some of the Buddhist teachings and reinforce the non-sectarian, universal results of the meditation.
In my case, the training ended just before a wild storm came through Cape Town. So on the day we were released, I spent hours walking through torrential rain, crazy wind and grey skies feeling awe-struck at how loud, noisy and overwhleming real life is. Back in my hotel room before my flight back to Windhoek, I wrote down all the different components so I could capture my thoughts on the entire experience:
Learning the technique is deceiptively simple. Sit. Breathe. Feel the sensations in the body. Good or bad - doesn't matter. Just feel the sensations in the body. So, even if you don't actually follow any of the philosophical concepts, the results (feeling more zen and less affected by things) are very comforting.
In my case, I didn't correct bad technique at the start and so the cumulative effect of 10 days of meditation training resulted in severe eye strain, migraines and sea-sickness. (It turns out I was moving my eyeballs under my closed eyelids to "track" the parts of my body so I could feel the sensations better. I even might have even been crossing my eyes at times which would explain the intensity of my eye pain!) So I finished the course encouraged and intrigued but also sad, confused and somewhat embarrassed that I was injured and in unexpected pain. (Most people are in pain from sitting for so long and not getting in movement.)
I immediately stopped doing the technique and spent the several weeks after the retreat just thinking while healing. (My eyes felt swollen and so sensitive to touch and light and the migraines persisted for a while afterwards.) Once I felt better, I shaked down every Vipassana meditator in my life, I debated wise philosophical friends, and I journalled the hell out of everything. I still desperately wanted to make sense of everything.
What I finally accepted is that while the Vipassana experience is somewhat similar for everyone, each person learns their own lessons. At the very least that was the case for everyone I spoke to who went through the 10 day course. They each had a range of self-reckoning lessons: the quality of their self-talk, their integrity, their vulnerability, their intuition, their understanding about life, their capacity for the unknown, their greater connection to humanity, etc. It gave me comfort to know that everyone comes out a bit mixed, but all seem grateful to find a technique to embody more zen in life.
Symbolically, I now think Vipassana damaged my vision (temporarily) to help me release my stubborn fear of losing control. I was literally trying so hard that I was (unknowingly) forcing my eyes which constricted my veins and tightened my scalp resulting in the intense eye pain and the migraines that followed. So I had to abandon the meditation practice at the pinnacle of the retreat experience! I had to release my internal pressure. Relax. Get some distance from the fear and shame of being out of control and let the lessons slowly come to me in their own time.
Beyond that, Vipassana also helped me broaden my perspective on mysticism, mind-body mysteries and some radically different philosophical ideas about life. After all those conversations, debates, journal entries, I eventually gave in to all of my confusing, unfinished, unresolved thoughts. I took it all in and then let it all go. I'll just accept what I can right now.
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The vipassana meditation technique is really beautiful and transforming. Despite my own experience of pain, most people learn to use vipassana to have less suffering, less attachment and more peace, more happiness in their lives. As for me, I'm very slowly retraining my eyes in Vipassana meditation. But I'm letting it happen with more ease and less fear. I know it will help me be more present and grateful for whatever else I get to experience in this lifetime.
So, cheers to trying new things and failing and everything in between,
and may it help you in your own journey,
Smarti
