Simply Inviting Cards and Keepsakes

Simply Inviting Cards offers wonderful handcrafted greetings cards, albums and paper goods. There are so many great things to choose from! From Holiday cards, Everyday cards, to neat things like recipe books!

Let's get to know Jen, the owner, better. I asked her to give some background on her and her shop, this was her response:

"I'm 33 years old and live in Manhattan, Kansas with loving and very supportive husband, Rusty. We will celebrate our first wedding anniversary at the end of October. :) We also share our home with our 3 year-old Bluetick Coonhound, Blaster.

I've been a creative soul for as long as I can remember. My first art form was music. My mom alwasy told stories about how I would tap my foot and keep tempo with music that played on the radio. I don't remember this, so it had to be before my earliest memories. I started playing the French Horn in 5th grade and continued playing for the next 15 years. I enjoyed writing stories and poems in grade school. I also enjoyed reading books and magazines and watching shows revolving around interior design and decorating. By high school, I was heavily involved in instrumental music, theatre, musicals, and forensics. After high school, I attended college for a few years. I continued playing the Horn for a few more years after that. By 19, I had already started designing web sites. In doing so, I became more acquainted with digital illustration and photo rendering software. Remember Photoshop 4.0? That was my introduction to visual creativity!

I had trouble finding my niche, so I quit school and entered the work force. At this point, I was developing a web site for a locally owned book store. It was there that I took advantage of the art classes offered through the store. Through the classes, I learned that I liked working with grungy color and texture, no matter what the media was. I continued working at the store for a few more years before moving on. My next job was at a locally owned newspaper in a nearby town. The web design experience was very helpful, but learning the print side of design had an entirely different set of rules. It was at this job I quickly gained a different aspect to my personal aesthetic - clean shapes and lines! Interestingly enough, any combination of grungy colors, grungy textures, and clean lines do find their way into my items today!

There are a couple of different versions of the story of how I got into card making. My version of the story is this - card making started as a necessity. When Rusty and I were planning our wedding, we really didn't find any invitations or stationery that jived well with our personal tastes. I bought some card making magazines and did a little Googling to see what DIY stationery other brides were doing. I had some background in painting, drawing, mixed media, print publishing, web design, and digital art. It just made sense to me that I make our stationery instead of searching for stationery I'd never find. After that, I spent the next several months making everything by hand! The save the dates, invitations, programs, place cards, table numbers, and escort cards. I received so much great feedback from our wedding guests that after the wedding, I just continued to make cards."

Some of her favorite items from her shop are: The Explore Textured Collage Blank Greeting Card,The Imagine Winged Woman Blank Card,In Dreams Ivory and Black Blank Card,The Family Word Photo Album, and anything from the Halloween shop section!

I found some I was fond of too! The Haunting Halloween Sentiments Accordion is awesome! It is just layers and layers of Halloween delight! The Favorite Recipes Black Chipboard Album is another great find. This recipe album has black chipboard covers with a coordinating red, black, green, cream, and white medallion on the front. The Favorite Recipes graphic is stamped with black ink, embossed with clear embossing powder, and colored with Prismacolor Art Markers.The perimeter of the front cover is decorated with faux white stitching. Coordinating stitched grosgrain ribbon adorns the silver binder rings, which open easily for the addition of more pages. A great card for any occasion is the Fly Colorful Bird Card is great! It can be used for any reason. It is a very fun and colorful card!

Simply Inviting cards has new lines of items coming out soon! Check them out at http://SimplyInvitingCards.etsy.com.