1.       Tell us a little bit about yourself. First of all, I’m a mother of 3 children under the age of 12. They are my inspiration and passive navigators of my life. I began my entrepreneurial life inventing and bringing to market an all in one cotton diaper in 1989. We had a local diaper company buy our product and off to corporate world I went. I worked for Costco Wholesale for 15 years, in buying, as well as employee communications. For 8 of the 15 years I worked part time to be at home as much as possible with my children. Using my buying experience I began an on-line paper craft company, Paper Locket, in 1997. This evolved with the industry and I began creating digitally – with the new and improved technology on the market. In the past 3 years, Paper Locket has been transformed from products to a service. I no longer have my corporate job. My passion and time is dedicated to taking digital photos and transforming them into custom greeting cards, birth announcements and wall art. Personality – high energy, never bored, live every day to the fullest.

2. What do you enjoy most about your profession? Creating art out of moments and memories is definitely my calling! I’m highly inspired by experiences and capturing moments – plus I find the challenge of technology extremely rewarding. My purpose is to bring digital images (usually trapped inside computers) to life.
  3. Tell us about the Art and Auctions for Schools? As I mentioned, it’s all about my children. I walked into my son’s 3rd grade class, 3 years ago, and just had to borrow the hand drawn faces of all the children hanging on the walls. I scanned them and created a quilt-like piece featuring 20 heart-melting self portraits. The phrase “be yourself” seemed to really fit this piece. I created several sets of stationary for our school auction and each one sold for $75. They were irresistible! My auction art evolved with the technology. I can now bring these beautiful faces to life on oversized gallery wrapped canvases – up to 40×100″. It’s such a simple and fun process – children draw their face using any medium, the artwork is scanned, graphically arranged, and professionally printed onto gallery wrapped canvases. These pieces can make quite a bit of profit for the school. But truthfully, the owner of the project has a wonderful piece of art for life.  4. What was your vision for creating a program that supports Youth? To structure a simple and affordable program that brings not only profit to schools but leaves children and parents with a profound heartfelt message.
 5. From where do you draw inspiration? I’m inspired by life, experiences, moments, my children, my childhood, graphic design magazines, and digital scrapbooking galleries.
 6. What one thing would you like to learn this year?  How to hone in on who my customer is (who gets what I do) and how I can excel in this direction.
 

7. What is the one thing you would like readers to know about you?  About Paper Locket? I’m able to take a collection of loved photos – combine them together, add colors and words – and create a custom heirloom piece of art.

You can learn more about Wendy and her work at www.paperlocket.com