Monday Morning Pinch Me - New Minivan!

I've needed a new minivan for awhile now. My old one was 8 years old and had 120,000 miles on it. With three kids that translates to about 300,000 miles! Practical as we are, we wanted to wait until we found just the right one. Well, this weekend we did! Not only did we find a great minivan (Kia Sedona) but we found an amazing dealership.

We went to Fuccillo Kia in Cape Coral Florida. We were amazed at their fabulous customer service. Our salesman was a 7 year police officer turned salesman and he was fantastic. He even gave us some great parenting tips! The owner even sat with us and helped us get a better interest rate. To top it off, he gave us a gift certificate to a local restaurant (seafood!) because we had been there all day and hadn't eaten anything.

Buying a car has never been a fun experience -- until now. So, I thought it appropriate to send a nice thank you note. I had mentioned I designed greeting cards and the owner said he had never heard that before so I decided to design a fun card especially for them.

In doing so, I thought it would be interesting to show you all how the design process works for me. This is the pencil sketch I worked out beforehand.

From there, I create the design with a pointed pen. This takes a lot of time as I go over and over the design until I get each part just right.

From there, I created the final design for the card.





On the final card, I filled in the heart with a glitter pen and the card was printed on pearl paper.

Love my new minivan and we heart Fuccillo Kia!
Truly,
Erica

My first American Greetings job

I just completed my first gig for American Greetings. I am thrilled to be doing freelance for one of the top greeting card companies in the world! It was a great learning experience and just this one job has improved my "contemporary" lettering already.

It's slightly embarrassing to admit my first attempts were less than stellar. But the senior lettering designer was so patient and extremely helpful. His direction was excellent and I was able to accomplish what he was looking for. PHEW!

This is straight lettering - no illustration or card design - so it is done in black and white. Hard to imagine these two lines took me well over a 40 hour work week, 6 nibs, a full jar of McCaffery's, and two reams of paper! But the practice will certainly help in getting my style up to speed.

So here it is ... look for it in a major retailer near you next Father's Day!