Happy Birthday Kim!

I made this for my friend Kim, the ultimate giraffe lover! Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday, Kathy!

I can't believe we've known each other for 22 years!! Hope you have a fantabulous birthday!

EXTRAVAGANZA!!

So for the first time ever I have to say I ventured into new cardmaking territory. I recently completed an order for an "extravaganza card" that was to be given to a couple who was having an "extravaganza party"

This couple was having a party that was celebrating: their new engagement, their coming home from a huge trip in Europe, and both their birthdays. Whew! As such, the couple who placed the order wanted to give them a card that embodied all those things. I encountered a bit of a "cardmaking block" (if there was such a term), until my fabulous friend Allix gave me the idea of a Storybook Card. And the rest went happily ever after :)

So *inhales* happy birthday, and happy birthday again, congratulations on the new engagement, and welcome home to the couple!! *exhales*

The things I do for a couple's "I do"

Here is a wedding card I recently finished, and the person who ordered it requested that it be in a champagne color, as that was the wedding color. So in all my efforts to ensure I had the right shade of champagne, I brought my laptop to the store so I could make sure the materials I selected matched the general shade of champagne I found on the internet (based on a collection of 10 images I found off Google).

Needless to say the store owners were giving me strange looks, but really, I just think that a color like champagne can be hard to determine sometimes, because you know, you go and think it's this color and then go home and realize it's something else and you kind of warped it in your mind and....

...anyways, here's the card. Congratulations!

Thank YOU!!

I want to give a giant THANK YOU to everyone who came out to check me out (I mean my booth!) at the Highland Market on Saturday. The weather was awesome, despite the odd spells of rain, and I couldn't have asked for a better day. The support and warm reception towards my cards mean a lot to me!! There was so much talent there and it was great meeting new faces and other local entrepreneurs sharing their own passion with the community.

Speaking of passion...the days following the market led me to think about me, my cards, what I'm all about, and what I'm trying to achieve.

What I do is extremely modest and small, and truth be told I don't even really think of myself as running a "business" because frankly, I think I'm having too much fun to justify calling it something serious like a "business." The simple fact is that I do it for the love of it and I do it for the love of what value people receive from it.

My mentality on "never creating the same card twice" proves to be both a blessing and a challenge, but it's the challenge I love! It forces me to think outside of the box, to try new designs, creations, styles.

As for blessings , I can't stress enough how much I love telling people that the card they are purchasing, or the card I am giving to a friend or family member is the only one that was, and will, be created. And with that you can't imagine the high I get when I receive positive feedback from customers about how much the recipients loved their cards, how it was their favorite of all the cards received, that it was the one they kept after throwing the others away, and that it was the card that they displayed most prominently in their home. It's comments like these that let me how much the cards make them feel special and valued, which is exactly what I'm trying to achieve.

In this growing world of a buhjillion people, we're constantly surrounded by others: at work, school, with friends, family, it's endless. But despite all that, everyone in this world is created unique and beautiful in their own right, and well, shouldn't the cards that represent the important events in their lives be just the same?