Pictured here, I recently had the pleasure of interviewing the very talented Stephanie Nishikawa about her wonderful creative paper & gift store, The Paper Garden. After stumbling upon the beautiful handmade designs featured on her blog, I had to learn more! As we always love to inspire our customers and hear more about all of the great things that can be created with specialty paper, Stephanie was kind enough to take the time to answer a few questions I had about The Paper Garden and some of her fabulous designs. Read Stephanie’s interview, below.

I read briefly on your site that after your son was born, you gave up your career as a journalist to pursue one that you felt you would enjoy more. Can you please tell me more about this, and more about how The Paper Garden got started?

When I got engaged, my husband and I had a guest list of 400! We got married in 2001 in San Francisco, and after, I wanted to save money by making my own thank you cards. I made 200 of them and my husband sold all of them at a craft fair – we made 300 bucks! I was so excited someone would buy something I made! I then had to make 200 more for the real wedding thank yous. After our wedding, I moonlighted on the weekends to do craft shows selling my handmade card creations. Making cards was a stress release from the daily grind of local news. I was a general assignment TV reporter for the local CBS station in Sacramento. I was often the crime reporter and went after the big story of the day. This was my identity for 16 years, but after I had my son Miles in 2005, my new identity was D.I.Y. Mommy. I wanted to just stay home with my son and make cards, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to just stay home and not work. I decided to open up a paper and gift store where everyone could be the Martha Stewart on the block, and I could take Miles to work with me.

The Paper Garden is not just your typical rubber stamp or scrapbooking store with slat walls and round displays. It is a paper boutique with beautiful handmade papers from Japan; and everything – from our displays to our window trimmings – is made out of paper. In September 2010, we will celebrate 4 years, and I have not looked back. Handing in my microphone for paper, rubber, and scissors is no longer a dream, but a reality!

Have you always been a creative and artistic person?

Card making definitely started out as a hobby for me. I don’t know how to draw, so luckily stamps are my way to be creative. I used to love to bake; now I just whip up cards instead of food!

You note in the virtual tour of The Paper Garden that many of your customers tell you that the store is their “happy place.” Taking the tour, I have to agree – it does certainly look like a happy and colorful place! You mentioned you sell a variety of specialty paper, inks, and rubber stamps. What other services and products do you offer?

More than half of our business is wedding or party invitations, baby announcements and thank you cards. Some of our customers make their own cards and invites, but sometimes our customers don’t feel crafty, so we do it for them. We always show the customers how to stamp, but sometimes, they don’t have the time, so we are happy to do it for them!

We also sell hand cut paper, hand made cards, paper flowers, embellishments, and a lot of boutique toys and gifts.

Please tell me more about the various “Make and Take” and “Card O-Gram” classes I am reading about on your blog. Do you teach all of these?

90-percent of the classes – I teach – yes. It’s crazy, but I do teach them! It’s fun, and I especially love it when our customers come back for another class because they get hooked on stamping. It’s instant gratification!

Browsing through your blog, I see you are very talented and creative. Everything you feature is so interesting! Will you tell me about some of your favorite paper stocks and tools?

I especially love the Stardream card stock line. It’s a shimmery paper that takes ink well, and our laser can print on it nicely. I love all of the Stardream colors. I also love memory box card stocks. As for favorite tools, I love ribbons and Stickles Glitter Glue. I also often use punches by Marvy and EK Success.

I am fairly new to the creative paper scene, so I am just starting to experiment with projects on the more difficult end of things – those that require all of the fun tools and stamps that are found in craft stores. I am enjoying the experimenting that goes along with this, and when I see something that I may be able to replicate, I take immediate interest in it! I loved the beach style pocket fold that you featured in a card-o-gram class in February of this year. It looks fairly simple in design. Can you please tell me a bit more about the process of making this?

This pocketfold is one of thee most popular invites in our store. You get two invites out of one sheet of 8.5 X 11 cardstock. You just cut the cardstock in half at 4.25 X 11, and I use a Scor-Pal to score the cardstock at 1.5 and 5.5 inches, forming a pocketfold. When you fold the layers at the crease marks you get a nice pocketfold that is held together with the ribbon.

What about you? Do you have any favorite projects in particular that you would like to discuss?

I love making treat pouches for any kind of celebration – Halloween, Christmas, Valentine’s Day… It’s fun to make these for my son’s classmates and friends.

Thank you Stephanie, for taking the time to tell us more about yourself, The Paper Garden, and your lovely designs.

Kristen Desrosier