I have such a wonderful designer to show you for our Feature Friday segment today. I love subway art and this lady creates some gorgeous pieces of "word" art for your wall.

I love typography prints and these ones are really quite cute and unique. I would love to introduce Margaret to you and I will let her take it away.......

Hi and thank you Melissa for the opportunity to be this weeks Feature Friday business. I am Margaret Sumner of Twisted Pieces. Living on the beautiful south coast of NSW at Kiama with my husband and two cats Chilli and Ziggy and three Chinese Silky chooks. On weekends, our family grows by three more when our son Brendan brings his children Matilda 6 and Darwyn nearly four to stay. Our daughter Nicola with husband Marco and nine-month-old son Valentino live in Sydney.

Besides working nearly full time creating for Twisted Pieces I like to read books by John Grisham with his in-depth crime novels and Nicholas Sparks and his beautiful romance. It is like my life polarised and diverse. My hobbies throughout my years have been creating which started at school when I loved to sew and do needlework, starting at eight when I sewed my first wearable dress. Since then whilst never giving up sewing, I have dabbled in leatherwork and macramé, soft fabric items (remember the fabric covered tissue boxes), cross stitch and now for the past nine years scrap booking and card making. Over these years I sold most of the pieces I produced until it came to scrap booking when I began card making with the outlook to sell these, which I now do at markets and on my website.

Paper crafting was what brought me to begin my business Twisted Pieces in July of 2011. I had purchased a very large cutting machine and software in April of 2011 to design and cut my own chipboard and cardstock embellishments for my scraping and cards. At this time, I noticed that wall decals were becoming quite popular. My cutting machine was more than perfect to cut the vinyl for decals, which were the start of the business. In October 2011, I made my first subway art, which was a name and personality board of my daughter Nicola. I followed this with kitchen boards and family rules. I now have inspirational art on boards or in decals. Eye chart inspirations came soon after that. My favourite ‘be adorable’, which is the giveaway for this week’s Feature Friday.

I tend to spend more time painting the boards, as these need to look good and go with the artwork put on them. Designing subway art is also time consuming, as I believe the font needs to capture the essence of the ‘saying’. As you will see in ‘In our home’, I have used fonts to illustrate the words.

My website was the first to open in August, and then followed my first market in Kiama in the October both of 2011. Following this, my daughter opening a store there in February of 2012 guided me to Made It.

Since that October day, I have been trawling the internet, magazines and the environment for inspiration to create different and unique subway art. Changing by adding to enhance these for the Australian market. My family provides me with ideas especially for children and the colours and size that may be preferred for the small person in our lives.

My subway art is created on a painted MDF board, which is smooth painted, distressed with paint or sandpaper. I like to stay with the contempory colours of today, these being white, beige and black paint, which provides a backdrop for most colour choices for the vinyl lettering which is designed on computer software then cut by machine. Decals are made in the same way though the application tape is left adhered to the vinyl for the customer to place the decal straight onto the wall.

My dream for my business is for my products to move further into retail. However, I already have a small amount of subway art in shops now I would like to see a lot more. These designs are made exclusive to a shop, providing the retailer with a unique product.

You can find me on my Twisted Pieces website, on Made It
on Craftumi and on Facebook.

GIVEAWAY ALERT!

My giveaway this week is Subway art 'be adorable', measuring 600mm x 300mm painted in beige with white lettering with a routed hanger. It can be used as a family rules in the home or in the bedroom of children or teengers inspiring them daily. I have chosen the beige for the contempory home. Enjoy.

Thank you Melissa and The Whimsical Wife for the opportunity to show my business to you all.

To enter the giveway simply follow the prompts in the the giveaway box below and enter as many times as you want to be in the chance to win this gorgeous print. Entries close the 30th of May and the winner will be announced on the 31st of May.

This giveaway is for australian residents only.