The Anatomy of a My Heart Beats Card
When you think back on your life, you remember the every day moments more than you recall the formal celebrations.I bet when you think about your girlfriends from high school, you recall more memories of sleepovers, trips to the mall, hanging around the pool and lunchroom conversations than you do of birthdays and graduation.
The first cards were created as a tool to celebrate every day (which became the tagline). The original cards are 5" x 7" because I wanted the envelopes to be big enough so that 4 x 6 pictures could be included without being cut. Back then film was still dominate. We took our rolls of 24-exposure film to a photo counter at a store, and one hour later, we picket up doubles of every picture so that we could share them.
Each card has a "backstory". Sometimes it's funny; sometimes it's sweet. It is always about every day things rather than milestones or traditional card-giving moments. Writing the backstories was good training for Twitter. I had to tell a whole story using as few words as possible. No emojis and no abbreviations.
The hero of every story is She. She has victories and setbacks. She is fun and thoughtful. She is smart and silly. Sometimes she is overwhelmed and sometimes she is underappreciated. She is brave and cautious. She is you and your best friends.
The message on the front of the card is the "bottom line" from the story. It's the last sentence of the backstory. Sometimes this was the first thing that I wrote, and I'd build a story around it.
The image is a "snapshot" from the story. This was always created after the story was written. I'd draw the people first and then build the scene and objects with the scrapbooking software using shapes.
And the "heartbeat" is the emotion of the card. The heart is from the logo. The name My Heart Beats has two origins. The first is to celebrate that our lives our made up of little moments strung together - heartbeats. The second celebrates the things that makes our hearts beat.
Celebrate every day,
Kelly
