How LulaFlora keeps its papel picado and piñatas on Pinterest
LulaFlora
LulaFlora has made more than 26,000 sales on Etsy since 2014 with handmade papel picado and mini piñata party favors. With a catalog that covers nearly every kind of celebration, it uses Alura's Smart Pins to keep the designs on Pinterest without making each pin by hand.
Papel picado, cut in card stock
LulaFlora helped start the mini piñata party favor trend. The best known is a small donkey in layered tissue over sturdy card stock, fillable, in whatever colors the party calls for. Next to the piñatas sits a full line of papel picado, the Mexican cut-paper flags, made in premium card stock rather than tissue so they photograph well and survive the trip to the venue and back. Banners arrive fully assembled and ready to hang, with the couple's names, the baby's name or a date cut right into the flags.
The shop's work has gone to Mexican weddings, quinceañeras, bautizos, baby showers and first birthdays, and to clients like Google, Netflix, DreamWorks and The Ritz Carlton. LulaFlora has designed a line of birthday cards for Hallmark Signature and been featured in Martha Stewart and Style Me Pretty. It holds a 4.93 star rating from more than 4,300 reviews.
A party for every month of the year
A party shop never has one season. Spring brings Easter treat boxes and Cinco de Mayo piñatas, then graduation banners for the class of 2026. Fall brings Day of the Dead garlands for the ofrenda, Halloween ghost boxes with a child's name on them and personalized Thanksgiving table tags. Weddings and baby showers run all year. With more than 300 active listings, there's always something new going up.
Pinterest is where a lot of those parties get planned, so every listing could use a pin. Making one by hand means choosing a photo, writing a title and a description and picking a board, again and again. In a shop where every banner is cut and assembled to order, that's the job that waits.
“People plan a fiesta on Pinterest long before they order anything. I knew we needed to be there, but I'd rather spend the day cutting banners than writing pins.”
One board, filled from the whole catalog
LulaFlora connected its Pinterest account to Alura and pointed everything at a single board, Lula Flora Etsy Products. Then it switched on Smart Pins. Once a day, Smart Pins fills the queue about ten days ahead with pins made from the shop's active listings, ranked mostly by Etsy listing views. A photo pinned in the past week isn't used again, so a popular design comes back with a different picture.
Pin text is set to Optimized for Pinterest with AI. Instead of copying the Etsy title, each pin gets a title and description written for someone browsing Pinterest, built from the listing itself. The mini donkey piñatas went out as "Mini Donkey Piñata Party Favors for Fiesta Celebrations", and a Cielito Lindo banner as "Personalized Mexican Baptism Banner for Celebrations".
The queue posts on the days and time slots the shop has set. Any pin in it can be edited, reordered or deleted before it goes out, and anything left alone simply posts on schedule.
“Everything goes on one board on purpose. Someone saving a fiesta baby shower banner usually wants the cake topper, the favor tags and the piñatas too.”
New designs get their first pin on their own
The second automation, Pin New Listings, runs once a day and picks up any listing that went live in the past day. When LulaFlora added a Day of the Dead papel picado garland, with sugar skulls and marigolds for the ofrenda, it got its first pin from that job without anyone making it. The personalized Halloween ghost treat boxes went the same way. Later, Smart Pins put them back in the queue with new pins of their own.
The two jobs split the work. Pin New Listings makes sure a brand-new design gets a first pin. Smart Pins, which ranks mostly by Etsy listing views, brings back the designs shoppers are already looking at on Etsy most often.
Pins that read like a party plan
The shop's Pinterest now posts from across the catalog: cake toppers for Cielito Lindo baby showers, cowboy boot piñatas for rodeo birthdays, floral papel picado straws, gingerbread house gift boxes. Most pins name the occasion they're for, like "Day of the Dead Papel Picado Garland for Celebrations" or "Personalized Halloween Ghost Treat Box for Kids", and each one links back to the Etsy listing.
None of it depends on someone remembering to pin. New listings are picked up within a day of going live, and the rest of the catalog comes round in the queue, each design with a fresh title and description written for that pin.
Show the party, not just the product
LulaFlora's listing photos rarely show a product on a plain background. A banner hangs over a courtyard table, a cake topper stands on a tiered wedding cake, and a hand holds a piñata against a pink dress. That's the advice for other sellers: show the item in the middle of the celebration it's made for, so a planner can picture it at theirs.
“Nobody saves a flag on a white background. They save the table with the flags on it, because that's the party they want to throw.”
LulaFlora received Alura credits as a thank-you for sharing this story.