When my daughter was born, we didn't do the things a lot of people like to do with their freshly baked babies. We didn't take newborn photos of her asleep in a basket or pictures every month with a sign stating how old she was. Instead we stayed by her side through 101 days in the hospital, through two surgeries to fix the birth defect in her bowels, through countless blood draws, x-rays, and dressing changes.

After we finally brought her home, her medical care was too involved for me to return to my fast and furious career in public relations. So I left to take care of her, and realized that being home gave me the time and flexibility to make a longtime dream of having an Etsy shop a reality. It also gave me something else to focus on, a different outlet for my mind and my hands.

I've been making cards for friends and family members for a long time, on holidays and birthdays and just for fun. When I'm drawing and painting, I'm able to get out of my head and truly live in the moment. I can escape and just create, without over thinking (as the perfectionist in me always tends to do). Plus I've always found the canned sentiments in drug store cards to be boring, silly or just impersonal. I'd rather make something by hand because those are the cards people tuck into books and in keepsake boxes. Those are the cards that last.

It's called mini mintery because other than make the paper (which you wouldn't want me to do anyways, it really wouldn't be very pretty), we do it all here. The card ideas are conceptualized, designed, sketched, perfected, hand drawn, and hand painted right here in our little house. We don't draw something once and then send it out to get scanned and reprinted. Each card is a work of miniature art and a true keepsake.

Is mintery a word? To me it means a place where paper things are made. But it actually comes from a very famous poem you may recognize:

Vintery, mintery, cutery, corn,
Apple seed and apple thorn,
Wire, briar, limber lock,
Three geese in a flock.
One flew east,
And one flew west,
And one flew over,
The cuckoo's nest.