Art has always been part of my life. I went to school for art and graduated with a BFA with a study in both Graphic Design and Painting. At the time I mainly painted in oils and acrylics. Once I graduated I started working as a Graphic Designer and then moved up to being an Art Director for many years. Invitation and stationery design really caught my interest when designing my own wedding invitations. When the invitation creation process started, I realized how many options I had in front of me. With such an abundance of ideas, and the passion to do more, I decided to start my own business.
My very first client was a co-worker. Her wedding was just a couple months before mine. When showing her all the different items I was designing for my wedding, she asked me if I could design items for her that match her wedding theme. I created menus, escort cards and tags for her and she loved them. A year later while on maternity leave, it was the perfect time for me to start creating new invitation designs and open my Etsy Shop. I knew one day I wanted to be self employed home with my girls, so this was my first step. In the beginning I purchased royalty free images for all my designs, but knew in the future I would love to be able to feature my own artwork. Here is a sampling of some my first invitation designs.
As I grew the business my favorite part was designing bespoke wedding invitations for local brides and grooms. Many of these custom designs became my best sellers throughout the years. Then Covid hit and the wedding industry was at a stand still. It was the great time for me to get back into painting. I really had not painted since before my daughters were born. And in the back of my head I had always wanted to try watercolors again. I had taken a watercolor class in my high school years and loved it. With the down time of my invitation business, it was the perfect opportunity to start painting and creating my own line of stationery products. I love nature and flowers, so I first kept my paintings simple with just a branch or sprig of flowers on a white background. These were perfect to use in designing notecards, thank you cards and greeting cards. This is also when I had decided to go eco friendly and started my search for the perfect recycled paper to use for my new products.
As I grew more comfortable with watercolors, I started to push my boundaries a bit and started painting more still life and florals with backgrounds.
And at the end of 2022, while working on my new holiday collection, I finally tried my first animal, a baby deer. From there the nursery collection was born.
In the Fall of 2022 I also decided to start selling at some local artisan fairs. It is very interesting to see how my best sellers online did not do as well in person, where as other designs did very well. Being able to talk directly to the public about your artwork can be an eye opener. It gave me a better perspective about my work and what direction I want to go in. My animal stationery has been such a big hit that I am working on a bunch of new animals. Plus, I want to further my landscape painting and play around more with using gouache paints. As I move forward in a new year some advise that I received from an online small business coach was to pick your word of the year. I think this year it will be “progress”.