Minted interviewed me for the recurring Meet a Mintie posts on their blog.  They asked me about my two favorite subjects: ME and Minted!  LOL   All kidding aside, I am completely flattered that anyone would want to read about me in the first place.  I’m so grateful for all the kindness and love that Minted and the community have showered on me.

Wedding Invitations – Vintage Luxe

Wedding Invitations – Frolic

Wedding Invitations – Summer Gardens

This was actually really fun.  I think the hardest part was nailing down what ideas to use.  I still don’t know how I feel about limiting the number of entries per designer thing…  I don’t know how much self editing this cause me to do.  We’re these the best design I would have put out there really?  I guess we may never know.  I think limiting the number of designs may cause you to test the waters more, but then you’re really just wasting time waiting for comments.  Go design something.  I’m going to sleep. =)

That’s all folks.  Here are all my entries for Minted’s The Keep in Touch Good Housekeeping Design Challenge. Get get ready to scroll down for a while…  With so many fantastic entries this time.  It’s really anybody’s game. Vote for my designs by clicking on the images below.  You don’t have to give me 5s.  Just vote! =P

Modern Tron Personal Stationery

as the year goes by Personal Stationery

Bling Bling Personal Stationery

Buttercup Charm Personal Stationery

Chef’s Notes Personal Stationery

CMYK Personal Stationery

Golden Afternoon Personal Stationery

He Says… She Says… Personal Stationery

hoopla Personal Stationery

i HatE Typing Personal Stationery

I love garlic Personal Stationery

just darling Personal Stationery

let’s ketchup! Personal Stationery

my two cents Personal Stationery

short outline Personal Stationery

sweet nothings Personal Stationery

Tea Party Personal Stationery

Two Braids Personal Stationery

Wanna Lick? Personal Stationery

Some of you make be wondering why I am so darn vocal on the minted challenges and why I bother to help other design improve their craft.  It’s actually something I learned from my husband and his geek culture.  He’s a hardcore programmer and loves this ‘open source’ world out there.  The general idea is you put some code or an idea out there to a community of people who love the same thing you love.  You say here take it, use it, make it better and give it back to the community.  You’d be amazed at what can happen when people start thinking this way.  I’m not into the whole programming thing, but I really like the concept of their community.  As a 10 year novice to the design world.  There are so many hurdles and hoops I had to figure out to get to where I am.  I just figure why let all that information I gathered go to waste when someone else can use it and not have to waste their time like me.  So that’s where I found the goal of my blog.  It is to help designers find answers and resources  to common problems so that they can freely go and design something.  I’m no expert, nor will i ever claim be one.  So take what you can from this and well if it helps you, great! My job is done.

Something you should probably know about me is that I’m highly competitive.  Yes, the thought of ‘Do I really  want to help someone else win?’ has crossed my mind every time I see a fantastic design pop-up on my monitor.  Because of my competitive nature, I strive for the best and if I don’t compete against the best I will never achieve my goal.  The best boss I had, I hated, because he was real critical of my work and I wasn’t use to people giving me an honest critique. But looking back, I now realize I grew so much as a designer during that time.  So don’t be afraid of negative comments.  Learn from them.

Enough of this. I have to check for more designs.  Hurry! Go design something!

Brainstorm By Nitjyot Saroan

This my personal brain dump so far for the newly announced Minted Design Challenge. Hope this helps to inspire some designs out there.  There are too many ideas in my head and I lack the time, energy or skills to accomplish them all.  Feel free to use any ideas listed below.  If this is helpful to you at all, please post a comment so I can determine whether or not to blog about this next time! BEWARE not everything makes sense even to me.  Kinda like a dream I guess…

• You deserve better than an email…
• This is a letter.
• Email is so yesterday.
• Retro mail
• It’s a new day.
• Tag, you’re it!
• Keep in touch with friends. CHECK!
• Lost art of letter writing…

You're a Blast! by Dish and Spoon

This was my pick for 1st place but it placed 5th.  A few photocards took the top spots and one that is not really kid-friendly.  I think those of us who read the challenge overview and focused on the Creative notes section are kicking ourselves.  I know I am.  There were some fantastic illustrations that didn’t fare a well as I thought they would.   I’m am excited to see the who editor’s picks for this challenge are.  I think one of the designer that was surprisingly under rated was Mandy Gordon.  Her illustrations were just fab.  There were some designs that scored over a 3 that I gave the “1- not so much” rating to.  That just goes to say design is subjective.  Congrats to all the winners.  Until the next challenge…

Hello Design Challengers -
As I was going through the minted font list I created this table which I hope will be helpful for some of you.  You can find a majority of the fonts listed on Font Yukle for FREE! Let know if I missed any free ones or how I can improve on this list. Go design something…
Serif Fonts – Each letter has little doohickeys called ‘serifs’ on the ends.

Script/ Other Fonts – All the scripts and fun fonts are under this section.

Here’s what Minted has to say about fonts and usage.

Minted licenses all the fonts that we use for print and online. While we are continually adding new fonts, we ask that you keep your fonts to those on this list. Fonts used in winning submissions that are not on this list will be substituted. ‘Free fonts’ that are licensed for commercial use for no charge that are not on this list may also be used.

The strangest thing happened while I was pregnant with my last child.  I developed an aversion to ALL things design. Yes. The mere sight of fonts or design websites made me nauseous.  Oh great…  Now what was I suppose to do??  No matter how tempted or hard I tried, each time I went to open minted.com or my Adobe Creative Suite, I felt sick to my stomach.  So as the challenges went on, I peeked in on all the fun competitions I missed, wondering if I would ever be able to design again.  Feeling so rusty after over a year,  here I am.  Between all the diaper changing, I was able to squeeze out four designs for the latest Design Challenge.  Forgive the state of my blog site.  My kiddos take priority over the bland genenic sad state this web space…

The One Wedding Invitations