Hand painted is a trend for Spring!

Look what I found at Vogue. http://www.style.com/trends/trend_report/011408/nicestems. It's so exciting! Now you absolutely must have a graceEmae handbag to go with your Spring fashions. Visit our Etsy shop and stock up!

Pictured is our Large Hydrangea handbag, wouldn't it look great with Anne Klein's beautiful dress?

A Creative Friend

Our friend Liz Larson created our graceEmae logo. We get compliments on it all the time. She is a talented graphic designer in our area and has recently started a jewelry business. You can see and buy her creations at http://www.larsondesignstudio.etsy.com/. She also has a blog at
http://larsondesignstudio.blogspot.com/ Her work has been featured in the treasury on Etsy more than once. Larson Design Studio is growing and if you look around Galena and the Tri-State area you can see Liz Larson's work all over.

Designing a website

We are not a huge business, but we are covering our expenses and having fun. The dreams are big, but we're not in a hurry to get there just yet. What we are doing right now is acquiring the skills and the materials, so when it is time to make the leap we will be ready. We both have young kids at home and it isn't time to focus on a full time job right now.

One of the skills I've been acquiring is website design. As an artist I have an idea of what looks good to me...those little details that make something look clean and professional. I've been spending this time learning Frontpage. It takes time...time to mess around, make mistakes and try things out. The manual is intimidating so I use it as a reference when I get stuck. I'm happy with the current version that I just published today, but there are still some mysteries, like how do I get those white bars off my picture on the About Us page?! It will be interesting to see how many times I change our website this year...I always see something out there that inspires me to try a new approach. That's what this time is for...exploration and education.

On the current version of our website I had fun with hyperlinks, if you click on Galena it will send you to the Galena CVB website with all of the local information.

Beth and I are starting to make plans for our spring trunk show. We want to introduce everyone to these pillows that we are working on. We'll keep you posted on the date and location.

New year, fresh start!

I have been freezing my buns off for over two weeks now. Nothing inspires me more than a frosty nose and tingling toes!

Beth and I have been working on our new line of hand painted pillows. We hope to have photos of our samples within a week and have them listed in our Etsy shop within the month. We have listed our new note cards with our colorful designs printed on them. You can buy a set of six for $10...what a deal!

graceEmae started with one cute little hand painted bag we called "Ribbon". Here it is smushed into my scanner. We see 2008 as a fresh start with new ideas and more designs. Better photography, better website and more Etsy sales are our goals. Keep checking in with us, we've already made progress in these areas and it isn't even February yet!