A Creative Life: February 13 Creative

Happy Monday everyone! I can't tell you how positively excited I am to start our week here by introducing our latest Designing Moms "Make" contributors. As you will soon read, these are three talented, vibrant and creative moms who make up the February 13 Creative team. How truly lucky they are to have one another and we are certainly so lucky to have them be a part of Designing Moms as we'll get to see what kinds of crafty projects they have up their sleeves. Please help me give a big welcome to these ladies. Later this week I will be introducing their first fantastic "Make" project (think: treasure). When I saw it, I made little "ooo!" sounds.

Well, hello there!

I’m Betsy Cordes (that’s me in the center) and together with my amazing partners, Pamela Nudel (right) and Amy Suther (left), we form a happy little trio known as february 13 creative, an art licensing and design studio in San Francisco. And yes, we’re moms, too, so we are truly delighted and honored to be contributing to this wonderful blog.

A peek inside our studios...

...F13 worldwide headquarters, San Francisco (aka Betsy's home office)

...our Novato office (aka Amy's sunny home studio)

...our Berkeley annex (aka Pam's serene home workshop)

Having perused the profiles of the many amazing Designing Moms, I think we must be the Veteran Moms of the bunch. Our youngest "studio interns" are 4 and 6 Pam's daughters, Elise and Avery); Amy's girls (identical twins, Tavia and Jacey) are 8; and our oldest (my son, Henry) is...16! In fact, now that I think of it, my career as a designer is as old as Henry; I used my maternity leave to jump-start a more creative work life.

Our Proudest creations...

Our company is actually our newest baby. We formed February 13 Creative just about a year ago. We had all collaborated with one another on various projects and jobs over the years and finally the timing was right to plunge into business together, to explore our mutual interest in art licensing. Although we've all had careers in design for many years, we're fairly new to art licensing and still have a way to go before we are the household presence we aspire to. We're excited for the adventure! You can currently find our stuff on greeting cards, invites, wrapping paper and gift totes from Cardstore.com, Design Design, Great Arrow Graphics and Papyrus. And you'll soon see our design on fabrics from Robert Kaufman...our first non-paper product license.

A little bit of our illustration and design work, from babies to Christmas...

Our licensing work is primarily digital, so we’re always eager to step away from the screen and the Wacom tablet and get down with a little glue, paint, glitter and whatever other crafty items and tools we can get our hands on. Our kids are often our best accomplices for these creative diversions, so we were really excited when Cat asked us to contribute some of our project ideas to the “Make” section of Designing Moms.

Here’s just a little taste of some of the fun projects we have to share with you...

We look forward to sharing these projects and others with you. We hope you find lots of inspiration and good times with your kids... and that you’ll share your results with us!

Cheers!

Betsy, Pam, and Amy