ABOUT ME

​[1970ish]: Martha picks an endangered flower and proudly shows her grimacing father. It is saved in a fat book. This is called foreshadowing.

[1989]: Martha gets an entry-level job at a Boston newspaper. Says goodbye to waitressing forever.
 
[1991]: As she climbs the corporate ladder, Martha needs more creativity in her life. Takes an adult education in how to make handmade paper. Can’t stop making it every weekend. Pretty soon all storage space is full of paper.
 
[1992]: Starts selling handmade paper greeting cards at craft shows just to reclaim closets and drawers.
 
[1993]: Martha presses flowers from her father’s garden and begins adding them to the front of her cards. Her “Garden Variety” card line is born. She waits for the internet to be born.
 
[1994]: Martha gets married and convinces her dubious mother to let her make her own wedding invitations. Mother is impressed.
 
[1998]: Martha leaves her position as Lifestyles Editor to devote herself full time to her business. She gets bruises from pinching herself.
 
[2000]: She moves to upstate New York and joins an artist cooperative where her work evolves with encouragement from a community of artists.
 
[2002]: Martha is still making every card by hand. Begins making larger artwork that is framed.
 
[2004]: She expands her business into custom work, making wedding invitations with her pressed flowers and handmade paper.
 
[2006]: Martha reads a magazine story about animals and birds made exclusively from pressed flowers. It sticks in her head.
 
[2008]: Martha joins Etsy and the handmade paper business explodes, mostly all over the kitchen. Her family wonders if they will ever eat a hot meal again.
 
[2009]: She uses pressed flowers in a new way. She creates her first human figures from nothing but pressed botanicals and dubs them Petal People. She frames them and is tickled whenever one sells.
 
[2010]: Martha prints her most successful Petal People designs onto cards. She finds a local print shop to reproduce a small batch of 8 different cards.
 
[2012]: A third batch of new designs is printed onto notecards. They sell steadily at craft shows. She drops the “Garden Variety” line and stops making cards one at a time. 
 
[2013]: Martha introduces more designs in small batches and tests them at the artisans market to “weed” out the less successful ones. (See what I did there?)
 
[2015]: Martha has her first gallery show of Petal People. She meets with shop owners for feedback on her cards. Informational meetings turn into wholesale orders. She takes on several wholesale accounts and introduces five more designs.
 
[2016]: At her second gallery show, Martha sells half of her work during the opening reception. She freaks out and spends the following week in her studio making nothing but Petal People.
 
[2017-present]: Martha creates new lines every year, expands her garden for more materials to pick and press, and convinces her husband that every trip to the garden store is tax deductible. She remembers her childhood self and gives a grateful nod of thanks.