Friday Feature

This week's featured artist is the very creative Heart Piercing Cards.



1. Tell us about you and your shop.

I am a fanciful twenty four year old with a super big heart and some lofty dreams. My ETSY shop, Heart Piercing Cards. is my most prized project; I like to think of the ETSY me as my doppelgänger---and I totally love her! She is a bit saucier than me, creative, playful, courageous and lacks the analytical, doubtful qualities I seems to have mastered. I started my shop in July after years of thinking about doing something with the hundreds of handmade cards that I'd come up with and given away over the years. I keep as many new cards in the shop as possible---I always have works in progress and I'm always looking for new techniques, new possibilities, new way to translate my thoughts onto paper.

2. How did you get started in your craft?

Note writing during my middle and high school days lead me to believe I actually had a special talent. Signing yearbooks turned into scrapbooking pages among my group of friends, so long ago I began leaving my mark with ink, paper, and glue and sending my legacy to mailboxes all over the world. It's one of my greatest joys---the handwritten letter---so naturally I was attracted to handmade cards. I started making them and not sending them (which is, btw, the hardest thing ever for me). After about two years of collecting cards, I decided I would conjure up the courage to see if they would sell on Etsy. I have sold almost 60 cards and really begun to develop "my" style. It's been a good road, and I hope it will be a long one, too.


3. What is your favorite material or tool?

I love adhesive. It comes in so many forms and serves so many great purposes! But it's a toss up: adhesive & old dictionaries. I can't get enough of either. The classic tattered black and white pages, modified to serve a new purpose and send a message are undoubtedly my favorite material. Adhesive is probably my favorite tool. It bonds my creations to paper, and you can't ask for much more than that!


4. Where do you get your design inspiration from?

I get inspiration from life, the way one gets seashells by walking along the shoreline. I write down quotes heard on the bus line, follow links on my favorite blogs, collect scrap paper everywhere I go, read old books and comb through my grandmother's collection of art supplies. I spend time with family and friends, really listening to them and gathering what sparks their passions. I eat great food and drink unordinary wines, savouring exotic and familiar tastes; I watch movies where woman wear big dresses, have lucious wigs atop their heads, and dance around with champagne flutes in hand; I dream in color and take notes that way too. All of these are inspirations that I translate into greeting cards that capture the ordinary and the unfamiliar in fanciful ways.