Friday Feature: Viva La France Design

1. Tell us about you and your shop.
My name is Kara LaFrance I am a fine artist and graphic designer. I've been dealing with a rare pituitary disease but finally have it under some control. I take that new found health and create whatever inspires me - cards or paintings or both. I'm sure the two intertwine but they are different and have a different process. Either way creating things make me joyful from the inside. I still have bad days and can't get anything done but my projects wait for me so no harm done. Once I was feeling up to it I opened my shop first with my paintings and art print notecards and then started adding the handmade/designed cards.

http://www.etsy.com/shop/ViveLaFranceDesign

2. How did you get started in your craft?
I've been creating since I was a little girl and I've never stopped. Being chronically ill for so long I needed to try and focus on something so I started painting little watercolors and selling them locally in coffee shops and crafts shows. Then I started printing the watercolors and using them in cards. They did equally as well but, honestly, I became bored, so I went back to my large oil paintings, only making cards for my husband and getting my design fix from freelance projects. When I found etsy I started thinking about cards again.

3. What tool can you not live without?
It's a 3-fer Crops marks, my x-acto and metal ruler. The knife would do me no good without crop marks and straight edge. I hated when making our own mats was required in college!

4. What inspires you?
I can't put to words what inspiration for a painting feels like. I hope that inspiration is apparent in my paintings and no words are necessary.

My design is what ever it needs to be. I like my cards to be bold, quirky and honest sometimes just pretty. Maybe a word gets stuck in my head until I find the right pieces to put it into a card or I'll covet a lovely piece of paper and create a card because of it. Color inspires me.... paper inspires me.... nature inspires me.

5.Name one favorite item from your store

I do love how well the art prints cards turned out.