I was born and raised in the South where thank you notes are a "must do" and personalized stationery is a "must have". It is a Southern tradition that I hope never dies.

I have always loved beautiful paper of all kinds, but particularly stationery. As I child I would collect wedding invitations and Christmas cards. Partly for sentimental reasons, but also because I just thought they were pretty.

This carried on into my teen years. I always had a small collection of thank you notes on hand, and I hoarded notebooks and journals.

My family relocated to Utah just before I turned seventeen. I quickly gained a reputation at my new high school for being unusually ( read: oddly) polite when I gave a thank you note to a boy for going to a dance with me. And to his sister for setting me up with him.

At an open-air shopping center near our home was a small stationery shop. I was going through a little bit of a culture shock, and this shop was a haven for me. Within those walls my love for beautiful paper and desire to carry on the tradition of written correspondence was not foreign. This was the first time I really began to think about what one had to do to become a stationery designer.

Just before I graduated from college, my beloved stationery shop closed. The closest stationery shop was now 45 minutes away in downtown Salt Lake City. So I made do with whatever I could find in the stationery sections of the supercenters and big box chain stores in the area. I began to miss the colorful designs and the luxurious papers carried in that shop. Now I started thinking about how much fun it would be to be able to create stationery. But I pushed the thoughts aside. I didn't know much about the stationery industry, but I knew my degree in Public Health wouldn't get me far in that field.

A few years passed and I became busy with work and starting a family. It wasn't until after my first child, Grayson, turned two that the desire to design stationery came up again. Something about becoming a mother convinced me to pursue it. I had big dreams for my little boy and wanted nothing more than for him to have big dreams and chase after them. How can I encourage my child to do that when I'm not brave enough to do that for myself?

So I learned as much as possible about the stationery industry, about printing and paper. I took classes to learn how to use Illustrator, and read every book out there about starting a small creative business.

I started creating wedding invitations, birth announcements, and stationery sets for family and friends. I have found what I love the most about what I do is that these pretty pieces of paper are often part of a significant moment in someone's life and they become keepsakes. I am well aware that what I make is disposable and may end up in the trash. But for a small few my stationery will be treasured and tucked away because it is tied to a precious memory. How many people have kept their best friend's wedding invitation, their niece's birth announcement, a hand written note from a parent?

To be a part of something so special, even in such a small way, is an honor and a privilege. I do not take it lightly. Instead of printing my work at home I use a professional printer based in California that uses high quality papers and only prints stationery. I want to give my clients something they will treasure.