We thought it would be fun to take a stroll down memory lane and see how styles have changed over 25 years.  Whoa, this memory lane was a long one, we’ll just have to share a little sampling!

We have been happily working with C.R. Gibson for 25 years this year.  Happy Anniversary to all of us!  We just returned from a visit in Nashville with our wonderful C.R. Gibson friends, and we couldn’t wait to get back to the drawing board to get started on the next 25 years.

Photos: Top left, a welcoming sign when we arrived.  Bottom left, our newest collection, Welcome Home Noah. Right, Cathy with Sherrie McCulloch, Director of Infant Products, after a lively discussion of new designs for 2011.

We thought it would be fun to take a stroll down memory lane and see how styles have changed over 25 years.  Whoa, this memory lane was a long one, we’ll just have to share a little sampling!

1986, Share A Hug Paper Dinnerware; 1994 Woodcut Santa Christmas Collection; 1988 Village Square Kitchen Collection (I created this during the country-country-everywhere trend–I still miss my cool Ralph Lauren prairie boots!)

My first collection with C.R. Gibson was Share-A-Hug®, which was a group of characters built from this festive fella (above), J. Randolph Reindeer, who was based on a Christmas card (below) that I made when we lived in New York City, (note antlers) while I was veeeery pregnant with my first baby, Ellen. As you know, Ellen is the co-blogger of this blog, so, I guess you could say Ellen has been collaborating longer than she is old.

After Share-A-Hug, I continued to produce several everyday collections, Christmas groups, and eventually my first baby collection. And, then another and another … as you can see below, we love to make artwork for C.R. Gibson products!

Above top left clockwise: 1996, Little Noah Collection (best selling baby book at Babies R Us for 7 years straight! … and, I am having memories of all these borders painted by hand before computers … approximately 100 feet o’ flowers, whew!); 2003, Little Carousel Collection; 2004, Baby Princess Collection (more parents were learning if they were having a girl or boy, so we could now make an all-girl book … it was a pinkapalooza for us!);  2004, Baby All Star (boys-only, too!); 2004, Zoophabet® (These ABCs have found themselves decorating over 70 products); 2006, Little Pond (four years later and still a favorite). Photo below: 2010, our newest collection, Welcome Home Noah.

So that was a smattering of our collaborations with C.R. Gibson, and happily in 2009, we were able to say that over 2 million babies have a Cathy Heck baby book. We love to think of all the babies learning about their first milestones with our little characters.

So, we better get back to work for the next batch of babies.  Ellen and I are working on a bundle of fun new surprises coming your way soon.  Thank you to everyone at C.R. Gibson for giving us the opportunity to make lots of beautiful books for lots of adorable babies!