Mary's Montage; My given name is Mary Beth. My designs are created by putting together different elements & styles. I use some original paintings of mine, scanned objects, vintage graphics & digitally created images to make a design. I prefer the folk art look, handmade, repurposed, naive & unique. I am always looking for the beauty in things that are simple, discarded & forgotten. I think that describes my style.

My love of making things has always been a part of me. Making things & making do with old things has always been a way of life. As a child my mom & aunts were always painting old furniture & redecorating. They splashed on new color, new fabric & new life. They used antiques in new ways to create a fresh looks. My grandmother lived on a farm and was a school teacher. She created a sparkling beautiful home with simple old elements & lots of hard work. She made do. I learned to make my surroundings pleasing & unique using things I could throw together. A love of old things was born in me!

I loved drawing as a child, Mostly girls, flowers & houses. I suppose I was quite naive about the real world. I thought life would be easy, pleasing, pretty, happy & comfortable....Always exciting & new. As a young adult, I made some choices that put me into the real world... The working world....To make a long story short, I ended up working at a job that I did not like & really was not very good at for nearly 30 years. All the while dreaming of what it would be like to be creating things! Not that I regret any of my life, I see it all as just getting to this point. where everything comes together.

I give all credit to the grace of God! I am as happy as can be about how God took the ashes of my life & turned them into something more beautiful than I ever imagined. Jeff, my sweet loving husband of 31 years is a creative soul like myself. We have been blessed with 2 wonderful children & 2 beautiful granddaughters. We live in a little house on the lake. Now we both work from home everyday & are still best friends.

My favorite things to do: (besides making graphics! ) Interior decorating, gardening, genealogy, antiquing, crafting & being with my family :)