Artist and illustrator Karen Schipper infuses whimsy and color into her greeting cards and art.
When Karen Schipper needed to pick a major at Bob Jones University, her father gave her some sound advice. “Don’t chase money,” she recalls him saying. “Chase whatever you enjoy. If you can enjoy something, you’ll do that for the rest of your life, and money will come.”
She heeded his counsel and majored in graphic design. She has since turned her love of making art and illustrating into a thriving business selling paper goods with whimsical and colorful designs. Each card, notepad, art print, and tea towel features original illustrations, from waddling ducks (a favorite animal to draw) to smiling hearts, flower bouquets, intricate matchbooks, and much more.
In 2019, Schipper launched her first line of cards at the Indie Craft Parade and created the first matchbook print of her favorite Greenville spots. Wilson Girls, a popular pop-up shop, then supported her as she turned her hobby of making cards—“I’d always had a full-time job as an art director or a graphic designer,” she says—into an ongoing business.
She started the wholesale side of her business in 2022, which has grown tremendously ever since. More than 400 retailers nationwide, including Anthropologie, carry her products. She releases new cards each January and July.
“I said, ‘Whenever my cards can replace my salary for my full-time job, that’s when I’d make the leap. That happened earlier this year, and it’s been so fun,” she says.
Schipper starts each workday with a creative effort, such as drawing designs on paper at her home office’s mid-century-style desk. “My sketchbook isn’t pretty; it’s just a place to jot ideas down,” she says, adding that she paints the designs’ vibrant colors (pink and red are a favorite combination) in Photoshop on her iPad.
Greetings from Karen Schipper
Her love of color, illustration, and stationery started during her childhood in Hong Kong, where she and her older sister, Kelly, often explored while their textile-business-owner parents worked. The city’s tiled buildings, and even its basketball courts, “are painted all different colors,” says Schipper, who came to Greenville to attend college. “It’s a very colorful city, and I think that’s just engrained in me.”
When her family visited bookstores on weekends, she would find a corner and pore over magazines and picture books. “That’s where I first got introduced to design,” she says, adding that she loved watching colorful Japanese cartoons and making cards to send to friends and relatives at home.
Those childhood cards, cartoons, and picture books still inspire Schipper’s playful designs, as does “having the life we have in Greenville, with my family,” she says.
Sometimes, phrases—“Lucky Duck” and “Cat’s Pajamas” are favorites—spark an idea. “I love idioms and a play on language,” she says of phrases like “Ship to Do,” which tops one notepad. “I love humor, and I hate vulgarity. But finding the line is always good fun.”
Her cards are “usually designed with someone in mind. I want the illustration to be so happy that they see it, and it just brings them joy,” Schipper says, noting that the insides are purposefully left blank. “I want people to fill the inside with something meaningful. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy. It could be as simple as ‘I’m eating a bowl of noodles and was just thinking of you.’”
Fostering those connections fuels Schipper’s work. She and her husband, a comics author-illustrator, “don’t want to raise our sons to be attached to technology. But if we don’t use technology to communicate, how do we connect with people? That’s why cards are so important,” she says.
For more information or to purchase cards, notepads, tea towels, and prints, visit karenschipper.com.
Five Favorites
Schipper’s illustrations are rooted not just in her childhood, graphic design degree, and years of experience. She also finds inspiration in seeking joy, including from these five things:
- Paddleboarding and picnicking on Lake Jocassee. “It is the best lake around here and my complete happy place.”
- Reading fiction and meeting with her book club. “We call it the Dead Author Book Club because we usually read fiction from dead authors. I didn’t realize how much stories can transform your life.”
- Cooking and enjoying local restaurants like Tandem Creperie and Coffeehouse in Travelers Rest. “I just partnered with them on a T-shirt because we’ve been going there as a family for years.”
- Making art as a hobby, including at monthly craft nights with her girlfriends. “We were all so busy and just needed a reason to gather that didn’t involve food,” she says, adding that one gathering kicked off her painted clay wall tiles.
- Gardening and being outside. “I’m not an intense gardener, but I think there’s something about pulling out weeds and working with your hands.”
