Number 24! Congratulations, Marci, who said, “These are so beautiful! Thank you for the chance to win, I have my fingers crossed.”

We will be sending you your new Welcome Home Noah baby book, calendar, and photo album very soon.

Many thanks to all of you who entered the contest.  Please, stay tuned for more chances to win and updates on this adorable collection.  Again, we toast the online random number generator which decided our winner – you saved us on paper and scissors and a hat.

Tadah!  Our new collection is born:  we are proud to introduce Welcome Home Noah, published by the wonderful folks at C.R. Gibson.  I just received my samples, and they are beautiful!  We want to celebrate with a giveaway of three brand new pieces to one lucky winner next Friday.  (See photos and learn more at end of the post.)  The photo above shows our samples piled around the studio.  The baby books and several other pieces are covered in soft fabric and embellished with silky embroidery thread, which matches the artwork perfectly.  This is my fifth Noah’s Ark themed baby book collection.  I think the reason I receive so many requests for Noah’s Ark designs for babies is that the giver can feel as though he or she is giving a little blessing to a precious new child.

We designed this group to work perfectly for both boys and girls.  And, if you think the covers are pretty, wait until you peek inside.  The interior pages are so inviting that you will want to fill in every page … but lucky for you, a few wonderful years will need to pass before you record the First Day of Kindergarten page.  The picture below shows one of my favorite pages, the Family Tree.  New parents can fill it in before the new baby even arrives, which is a very good idea, since very soon their time will not be their own … for about the next 20 years!

We created unique patterns for each bordered page and lots of illustrations to help you tell the new story that is about to unfold.

One of my favorite coordinating products is the One-Year Calendar with Stickers.  I loved this product when I had new babies and I was trying to juggle work and motherhood, because the important happenings of each day were limited to one little square.  I could handle one square of info a day and I actually had a fairly thorough record of all those important milestones.  My idea was that later I could refer to it when I had a bit more time to fill in the baby book … I’m still waiting for that bit more time, but, at least I know I have all the info ready to go, one little square at a time.  And until you get around to finalizing that baby book, the Calendar is an excellent story-telling venue … when Julianna was little, she used to ask me to read to her right out of her calendar.  It’s usually a pretty satisfying read, with passages like, “Today, you were amazing.” and “Wow, you said your first word.  You are brilliant.”  I recommend this for an excellent self-esteem builder. Hey, I wonder if there is a calendar about me?

We hope you enjoy our new baby collection with your new baby or a special little one you are about to know.  You can find Welcome Home Noah online at C.R. Gibson.

To celebrate the birth of our new baby collection, we are giving away three new Welcome Home Noah products this week.  The winner will receive a bound Baby Book signed by the artist (that would be me), a First-Year Calendar with Stickers and a Grandma’s Brag Book!  Just add your comment to the comment box below, and we will pick a random winner on Friday, March 12.

Click here for the Blog Hop List….

Number 32!  Congratulations to Lisa R, we hope that your sister and her new baby boy will enjoy their friendly Noah’s Ark elephants.

And many thanks to all of you who entered the contest.  We will be having several more in the next few months to celebrate the arrival of Welcome Home Noah in stores, so please stay tuned for more chances to win.  Thanks also to the online random number generator which decided our winner – you saved us on paper and scissors and a hat.

It’s our blog birthday!  And, we are celebrating by saying thank you with our first Giveaway.  Please comment at the end of this post and we will choose a winner this Tuesday, February 23,  to receive a birthday present from us: a signed 9×9 framed print from our Noah’s Ark Two of a Kind collection, a one-of-a-kind gift for a little one you know and love.  (photo at end of post)

At this time last year, we started this blog so that we could connect more easily with all the moms and grandmoms (and dads and grandads) who were buying products from our baby collections.  And now we have over 1,000 new friends (that we know of).  It is so much fun to hear from a new mom who can’t wait to start entering her baby’s milestones in one of our baby books, or to hear from a grandfather who is helping his daughter decorate a room for a grandbaby-to-be.  Okay, okay, you’re right … we also use the blog to brag about Neville, our new rescue pup, who is the newest baby around our house, although in dog years, he is already a first grader.

We have enjoyed sharing new Cathy Heck products with you, while at the same time giving you a little glimspe into the amusing life in the studio. We like to show you our inspiration, and we love to hear about yours.  We are especially proud when our studio tales inspire a budding new artist to stretch her wings and fly.  We have also taken great pleasure in sharing some of our favorite finds in Austin and Berkeley, and hope you will be able to enjoy some of our local discoveries.  If you know of others we should try, tell us.  We’ll try to visit, especially if it involves the tasting of food!

This year brought the launch of our new site, Cathy Heck Nursery Art, from which anyone can help to create baby’s first artwork. The site is interactive.  It is so much fun to spell a baby’s new name with a group of canvases, choosing from cute characters and coordinating patterns, The canvases are archival giclée prints which we print right here in our Austin studio.  And, recently, we added the opportunity to order all of the designs printed on archival fine art paper, framed or unframed.  Go see!

Another fun milestone for this year was the creation of a beautiful new baby book collection for C.R. Gibson.  It is called Noah’s Ark Welcome Home, and it really does feel like a big warm welcome-home hug.  The products will be hitting the stores this month.  You will see much more about this adorable collection soon, but here is a sneak peek.

So, happy new blogosphere year to all of our new (and old) friends and please keep in touch.  We love to hear about the projects that you are creating using Cathy Heck products.  Send us your stories and pictures.
And don’t forget to comment at the end of this post so that you can win your Cathy Heck Studio Blog Birthday present.  See a photo below before we tie a birthday bow around it.

Add your blog link to the blog hop.

Attention personalized nursery art fans!  Ohdeedoh – part of the Apartment Therapy design blog group – is giving away one set of Cathy Heck personalized canvas nursery art for the next two days.  To enter, just fill out the entry form here and you could be getting a full set of your child’s name letters in any of Cathy’s seven different collections!

Happy Holidays!

Some fun news this week: Cathy Heck Nursery Art has been selected by Tot Trends magazine as one of 8 great personalized baby gifts on the web.

They say, “Using their interactive website you can choose the sizes, colors, characters, and letters of your liking. Making room decorating personal has never been so much fun.”

To celebrate, we are offering a 25% off coupon code from their site.

How very fun to be featured again in the online children’s design magazine Tot Trends! As you can see, Cathy Heck Nursery Art is front and center in the article about cool new products for a modern nursery’s decor.

And we’re making “room to grow” here at the studio as we speak:  There are new collections in the works, and ideas galore about different products that we can’t wait to try out on the site. We’ve also just updated the Noah 2 of a Kind nursery art collection to match the fabric collection that is being produced by Springs and sold in Jo-Ann stores.

Click here to see the article and enjoy 25% off any order at Cathy Heck Nursery Art!

Happy Trending.

Here’s to the camera-toting, bike-riding, land-manning, funnyman we love so much on his 50th birthday.  (He’s also the one we call to save us when Ellen has accidentally trashed critical html files or is for any reason sinking in a quicksand of unfamiliar code…)

We love you Uncle Doug!

Enjoy the ride!

We are proud to announce that Tot Trends Weekly Magazine has put together a special article on Cathy Heck Nursery Art for this week’s product showcase! The piece introduces Cathy, explains a bit about how the interactive website works, and comes with a very nice coupon for 25% off personalized nursery art chosen online.

Being “tot trendy” never felt so good…

We at the studio would like to wish you all a happy Labor Day today! May it be filled with relaxation and fun (and maybe a little bit of barbecue.)

In the “California office” we are grilling fish and cleaning up the apartment.  What are you up to over there in Austin?