Vicki McMillan learned the importance of first impressions during a successful 30-year real estate career. 

These days, she’s making lasting impressions with sweet, humorous, memorable greeting cards she designs.

 “I loved real estate and especially liked staging homes,” says Vicki, who was an art major at Texas A&M University.

Her new passion is Suitable For Framing, her one-woman business designing and creating greeting cards, a venture that kind of launched itself.

Vicki adopted that name when she began her cardmaking venture in 2019 after a delighted recipient of a personalized card Vicki created declared it “suitable for framing.” 

Born and raised in Texas, Vicki also lived in California, Oregon, and Kansas. When her husband, Michael, was about to retire, he asked where she wanted to live.

“I’d always loved Florida, and fell in love with The Villages,” Vicki says.

Once the couple moved to Central Florida, she got busy with activities and was on a dragon boat team for seven years. When she was recovering from hip replacement surgery, her good friend and dragon boat teammate Sherry Duffy introduced her to cardmaking.

Her Suitable for Framing card business now has 15 to 20 regular customers, and she also does occasional craft shows. 

Vicki turned a spare bedroom into her crafting room and spends 15 to 20 hours each week creating her mini masterpieces. Fortunately, she’s very organized with her supplies – paper, paints, pens, colored pencils, stamps, and embellishments. She also uses a variety of unexpected components in her cards, from old maps and googly eyes to Band-Aids.

Vicki gets ideas from her imagination, friends, magazines and browsing card shops. Customers also request specialty cards based on specific hobbies, colors, and themes. 

“When I get a new idea, sometimes I show it to my husband and ask him to rate it on a scale of 1 to 10,” says Vicki, who first sketches out her ideas before starting on the artwork.

“Making cards lets me be creative and do something for people I care about. I sell them, but I’d still do it for free. It’s entertaining for me and joy for the people who get them,” says Vicki, who also volunteers at Haven three times a week. 

As she points out, a physical card is much different from getting an e-card online.

“People really appreciate having something in their hand and knowing someone cared about them enough to send a card,” Vicki says. 

Photos: Nicole Hamel