Hi! It's Angie and I will be taking you through what we have done this week at AJ Ink Designs HQ...

It took me roughly 90 minutes to take the icons drawn by Jackie and position them very precisely depending on the number of each card. I used a template I made in Photoshop to keep the numbers, suits, and icons in the center all uniform.

Before we could place our order with our longtime supporter Minute Man Press, we had to make sure all of our cards were 2.5x3.5in. We finished the back of the card design but realized we also need boxes for each deck. When asking for a quote we inquired about boxes as well. Based on our work with them in the past, we believe they can take care of all our printing needs!

Our design teacher knows the education director at the Bruce Museum and when I mentioned it might be a good place to sell cards, we decided to reach out. The Bruce is well known for working with many local non-profits and I think this could be a perfect fit. Plus, they have a cool little gift shop that sells stuff like this all the time!

Last time, Jackie was working on a hand drawn version of the logo. BUT. She wasn't siked about the drawing and thought, "hey what if I just snag the letters from the actual Broadway posters?" From that thought, she created the new design featured below.

While all that good stuff was going on, I finished fixing up the home page and "store" pages on our website to be updated with our "Cards for a Cause" initiative. Our homepage now advertises for this project, AND, our shop is set up to be able to take in orders very soon (per the "coming soon" sign). To take orders I created a Google Form that will take deck amounts, preferred pickup location, payment type, and contact information and put them into a spreadsheet where we can keep track of our earnings for OBP!

Tune in next time for updates on the printing of our deck of cards!

Hi all!

Today we made a logo that can be used for the Cards for A Cause project's marketing efforts on posters, the website, etc. To make the logo we examined official show logos from the Broadway productions used in our deck. We also stayed true to our color pallet for the cards because we plan on putting four cards within that logo.

Another thing we worked on today was a design for the back of the playing cards. Originally we were going to use the AJ ink. Designs logo but then we realized we aren't promoting AJ ink. for this project, we are promoting OBP! So, their logo is prominently displayed on the new design for the back of the cards.

New update: Off Beat Players executive director, Kim Maylara, got back to us and is helping up with our press release distribution.

It is truly an exciting day to be a part of the Cards for A Cause team and we are very excited for this December fundraiser!

Today we started on the "Number Cards."  We decided to draw a unique symbol for each suit.  The Clubs will feature a wrench, to represent the mechanics from Grease.  The Diamonds will include a stack of cash, to represent the gamblers of Guys & Dolls.  The Hearts will show a diamond ring, representing the starts of Mamma Mia.  The Spades will use an electric guitar, to represent Bye Bye Birdie.  At first, we FORGOT that we were going to use these cool symbols- BUT after only a few mishaps, we prevailed!

Also we continued to work on the upcoming press release!  WE realized that RedBubble.com, the company we used for our previous fundraiser, would not be the best fit for this one, AKA, would not SUFFICE.  Instead, we will sell our items via Etsy.com, and this here website.  We also set a goal of raising $1,000,000 dollars for Off Beat Players.  We might actually change our goal from a million to a measly thousand.  That way, we can actually reach our goal!

Today we drew the final card design. It was the goat from Mamma Mia - A very important character. Angie colored in while I inked and we're almost finished with the entire list of face cars BUT we must complete all the number cards. We are going to use an original font of Angie's handwriting to do so. For the actual number cards instead of spades, clubs, etc we are going to use things from the play, like a wrench for grease, a ring for mamma mia, a dice for guys and dolls, and a music note for bye bye birdie.

Hello everyone!

Welcome back to the ol' bloggy blog. Today, we finalized more of the cards, we are about 3/4ths done now, and wrote this email to the head of OBP!

Hello Ms. Malara,

We heard that you were the one who could help us out most with this project, our brand is called AJ Ink and we do fundraisers using our designs. Some of our past work includes a fundraiser where we created calendars using Star Wars characters to raise money for Abilis raising $1800+. We also made t-shirts and sold them to raise money for the Women in Science conference in China. We sold our t-shirts on redbubble.com and were able to ensure the conference actually took place.

Now we have turned our sites to a local organization called Off Beat Players, we heard that you are the one we should speak to about partnering on our latest idea. Our design teacher Phil Lohmeyer has been in contact with OBP board of directors member Jimmy Librandi. He said that you may be the person who can help us out the most. We heard that you even reportedly said “This sounds amazing. I would love to hear more about it.” Thank you in advance for any help you may be able to give to our project.

Essentially, we are creating a deck of cards with all designs based on 4 different Broadway musicals. For Spades we are doing Guys and Dolls, for Clubs we are doing Grease, for Diamonds we are doing Bye Bye Birdie, and finally for Hearts we are doing Mamma Mia. Here are some examples of our cards below.

Some other ideas include printing and framing to sell as a series of framed artwork, a t-shirt. mugs, pillows, all proceeds from the sale of these items would exclusively support OBP.  We will figure out all the design specifics and cover the cost of production via our brand AJ Ink Designs. We need your help promoting the items to your audience and donating the profits to you.

In conclusion, we want to help you! If you can give us any advice on how to do this that would be greatly appreciated. Thanks again Ms. Malara!

Sincerely,
AJ Ink Designs
Jackie Zarrilli - WMS - age 12      
Angie Zarrilli - GHS - age 17   

Thank y'all for reading and stay tuned!

Good news! Steve Hohl is the director of the Off Beat Players!  We hunted him down by checking the OBP Instagram.  Steve was on a video explaining the OBP program.  We may have a connection to Steve through Phil, our Design teacher.  Phil is going to see if Steve would be open to working with AJInk on this fundraiser.

More Good news!  The cards are almost done.  We are about 3/4 done with the cards (drawn & colored), and about 1/3 done with finalizing (straightening the borders, and adding respective suit & card number).  After coloring them in Photoshop, we put them in the "Final Cards" folder in Google Drive.

Even MORE Good News!  We figured out the tricky "Daddios" card, from Mamma Mia.  We decided that we would make it 1 character, instead of 3.  When we tried to draw it earlier, it looked like a dad and his 2 sons, instead of 3 potential fathers.  Instead of these guys, we will draw Tanya.  She is a supporting character to mom (Donna) and daughter (Sophie).  We will figure out her accessories later, but this is a major step in FINISHING!

So, Good news all around!

Here's what each of us worked on today:

Angie was "Uniforming" all of the cards, so she...
-Drew out the letters and numbers for each, and the symbols for each.
-We decided to use a wrench for Grease, dice for Guys & Dolls, a microphone for Bye Bye Birdie, and a diamond ring for Mamma Mia.
-Adding the suit symbol to the middle of each face card.

Jackie was "Organizing" the final cards, so she...
-Renamed all of the images in Google Drive, for consistency.
-Created a document with all of the cards in order, to see who we were missing
-To create a high resolution document that will be sent to Minuteman Press

Last week we reached out to OBP (Off Beat Players), but they have not gotten back to us... EVEN THOUGH they have not replied, we are going to keep reaching out finding ways to contact them.  BYE!