January 21, 2014

Emily McDowell is an illustrator, hand-letterer, designer, and writer who lives in Los Angeles.

Her story on how she started her own stationery line is extremely inspirational for anyone out there with a 'dream'. After spending nearly a decade working as an advertising art director, writer and creative director, Emily decided to quit her full-time agency job at the beginning of 2011. At the time, she didn't know what exactly she wanted to do, but she knew she needed to try to figure it out. She started with going back to what she most loved to do as a kid - drawing - specifically, lettering — and writing stories.

She started posting her images on her personal Facebook page and after receiving requests from people to purchase them so she thought of opening an Etsy shop. The shop grew, she made a website, and started doing commissioned illustration work in between freelance advertising jobs. She always wanted to have a card line, but had talked herself out of it until January 2013, when she decided to do an experiment. She had 100 copies of one Valentine card she’d written, she put it in her Etsy shop, not knowing what would happen, figuring she’d sell a few. Etsy put it on their Facebook page, and it went viral. Emily shipped over 1,600 individual copies of that card to customers in 8 days. From this experience she decided to create her own stationery line and in May of 2013 she launched a line of 45 cards at the National Stationery Show.