Heather Thompson - Snickerdoodle Dreams & Goddess Greetings
It all began in 1999 when we moved to the Virginia Beach area and I decided I would stay at home with our two young boys (at the time). I started selling my hand-painted items like wooden ornaments, slate signs and such on eBay, which lead into my curiosity about how web design and how websites were created. I taught myself how to do web design and started a web company called Just Heavenly Creative Design, which grew to aid in the online business endeavors of over 60 companies. I then taught myself how to use Paint Shop Pro (I think it was version 5 way back then!!) and created custom designs for my customers in both web and print.
Eventually the need for graphics outgrew the need for web design, so I closed shop and created Snickerdoodle Dreams! I doodled anything and everything I could imagine! I quickly learned to love designing on the computer because it was instant gratification and I could simply erase with ease and start fresh daily! But the most gratifying part of Snickerdoodle Dreams was (and still is) the fact that I could make people smile through my artwork - it’s like a euphoric feeling of sorts! I started receiving notes in the mail (email and snail) from customers that adored my art and just wanted to thank me for the beautiful designs that made them feel good! …”just wanted to”…. I can’t ever remember writing a letter to someone (an artist or otherwise) that I admired whom I didn’t know already in my life because I “just wanted to”!! So for me to receive things like this in such kindness has given me the drive to keep creating for my customers and striving to provide for their graphic needs, not mine.
In repaying this kindness, I created the first auction template website geared towards small crafting businesses, www.AuctionTemplateCentral.com which I sold after two years. I created a digital scrapbooking website, www.ScrappyDoodleKits.com, which provided my digital scrapbook designs and photography collaborations. This website was dissolved into Snickerdoodle Dreams in 2006 to better serve my customers and allow for more design time. I created the first podcasting website geared towards everything digital scrapbooking, www.DiScTalkRadio.com (DiSc combined the first two letters from the words Digital Scrapbooking). Unfortunately, I had to sell this company only 4 months after I created the concept, but it is still well taken care of by the new owners! During this time, I also marketed my CDs to Michaels Craft Stores, being told to come back in a year because they didn’t have a digital scrapbooking section planned for their stores. I was also featured in numerous crafting, small business and digital scrapbooking magazines and worked under Penny Lane Publishing for a year.
Then in 2006, I met my best friend and now business partner, Tracy Lyapin. We are forming what will probably be the biggest project of my life - a new greeting card company called Goddess Greetings (www.goddessgreetings.com). We have been developing a patent keepsake system in our cards for over a year now and are ready to kick it into high gear to get our wonderful products on the shelves within the next couple months! We will be exhibiting at the National Stationery Show in NYC May 18 - 21 at the Javits Convention Center! Our website will be open in about 4 weeks, where we’ll be wholesaling our greeting cards to stores throughout the world! We have big plans for this so I hope you will follow and enjoy the artwork and poetry!
So without my wonderful customers, none of this would be possible. I hope to continue to provide artwork to those who enjoy it all throughout my life, no matter what form it’s in! Thank you for making this possible.
