Friday Feature ~ Picture Me Smiling

 This week we are featuring Heidi Baikie from Picture Me Smiling.She sells photo cards for every occasion and also handcrafted cards. Currently she is offering a $2 discount till May 15, 2015. Use the coupon code 4LEAFCLOVER to take advantage of it. Also,5% of all sales from March 8-May 10, 2015 will go to Roots Ethiopia to help provide school scholarships.

1. What is your shop name and url?

Heidi Baikie, Picture Me Smiling, https://www.etsy.com/shop/picturemesmiling

2. To which Etsy Teams do you belong?

SF Etsy
SF Book Lover Artists and Crafters

3. Please tell us about the items in your Etsy shop. What do you make? How did you learn your craft? What is involved in your creative process?

I started off with photography and putting my favorite/best photos into cards/mattes. Other cards made with washi tape and recycled book pages followed.

Now, I make paper flowers (Wall/Flowers) out of origami or Nepalese papers or book pages. I learned that from a YouTube video by Tuteate. The flowers looked good just hanging on the wall, and then I started mounting them on canvases.

Everything I create hopefully makes people smile. Much of my creative process is seeing something and tweaking it to make it "mine." Silly sayings, puns, idioms usually end up in the names of the products I make.

My creative process involves coffee or tea and either music or streaming movies. I can get into that zone where it's meditative as I doing production. Recently, I've started an art journal and that's inspiring me to think more about process and which skills I'd like to pursue.

4. Tell us two (or more) other interesting things about you.

My best selling photo is from the honeymoon trip my husband and I took to South America. We had taken some photography classes (still shooting slides!) and then one day when it was really drizzly weather in Peru, I only took out our waterproof point and shoot camera. In those days, we watched The Graham Norton Show. He would have funny signs on as a segment. We were walking near a glacier and there was a sign saying, "Acceso dificil pero no imposible." It means, access is difficult but not impossible. We laughed about how there'd be a DO NOT ENTER sign if it was the U.S. We were able to walk up to the glacier and could have climbed up on it. I took that picture as a funny memory. Then, came home and didn't do anything with it for a few years. Titled it, "The Way Ahead is Difficult But Not Impossible." Best selling photo ever...

We used to own a Fair Trade shop in Truckee and I miss it. Horrible location and we were open during the recession. Once our lease was up, we decided not to renew. We were becoming parents through adoption, so it was a good time to focus on family. I miss that shop! I've been plodding along with Picture Me Smiling ever since, and decided when my daughters were observing that "All the Dads work, and the Moms don't," that I needed to really push to make Picture Me Smiling a business. I'm in the brand development stage, and can't wait to see where this newly energized stage is taking me--and to be a visible role model to my girls so that they understand that parents who work from home still work.

5. Where else can we find out more about you and/or your creations?

My website http://picturemesmiling.blogspot.com/

6. What inspires your creations?

Literature, nature, humor

7.What is your biggest challenge related to your Etsy shop?
Design and product photos. I'm working on taking all new photos, and creating a brand identity.

8.What is your favorite item in your shop (currently for sale or previously sold)? Why is it your favorite?

My mini Wall/Flowers. They are just so sweet and they are a step up from how I started making the flowers.

https://www.etsy.com/listing/224837921/wall-flower-hanging-4-inches-x-4-inches?ref=shop_home_active_16

8.What crafting skill(s) do you wish you had or hope to learn someday?

Bookbinding. I took a bookbinding workshop at Atelier in Truckee, and am now obsessed with it! That may be the direction I end up heading with my branding. Trying to use up and get rid of everything I've produced to make way for this and collage.

9. If money were no object for just one day, what would you do?

I would buy a shopfront downtown Mountain View or Truckee and get it set up in 24 hours and open up.  

10. If your life was a book, what would be the title and how would your story end?

"The Curse of the Well Rounded Woman." ...and then she finally became highly skilled at all things to do with books. She made them, wrote them, sold them.

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