Designer puts personal spin on cards
By Shari Kaplan
Los Gatan Mary Beth Parfitt's life has included several challenging and enjoyable careers working for others, but she's finding the one she created for herself is the most rewarding of all.
Parfitt's first career path took her to the skies as a flight attendant--back in the days when they were known as "stewardesses." She followed this with the acquisition of a real-estate license and jobs as a realty office manager and a business broker.
After her retirement, Parfitt found something to do with her time that not only proved enjoyable, but became lucrative, too. She designs handcrafted greeting cards.
This creative endeavor began with Parfitt's interest in drying flowers after reading an article about the craft in a magazine. She later also started using freeze-dried flowers from her friend Linda Arietta, owner of Country Essences in downtown Los Gatos. It was Arietta who suggested Parfitt not limit herself to just gluing dried flower arrangements to cards, but to add fabric as well.
"I can't paint and I can't draw, but I've always liked fabrics and sewing," Parfitt says of why this appealed to her.
"Material has a personality--it can be very cantankerous sometimes, but if you know how to treat it, you can manage it," she says, adding how attracted she is to the myriad of colors, patterns and textures available in various materials. Some fabric swatches she buys in fabric and interior design stores, while others come from the clothes or remnants of friends who no longer want them.
"It's like giving life to something that otherwise would have been discarded," she says.
She begins with crisp white paper cards and envelopes, then glues handcut and handpulled swatches of fabric onto their covers. The term "pulling threads," Parfitt explains, refers to a technique that dates back to the ancient Egyptians, who did this to fabric used to wrap their sacred mummies. It involves taking a thread on the fabric's edge and pulling it several times back and forth to give a delicately frayed edge. Parfitt says this softens the fabric visually and tactually and gives it a more unique look.
"The pride and care that was taken, as well as the craftsmanship, tells of a quest for beauty and detail," she says of the Egyptians, whose pride she, too, shares.
After covering a card with fabric, Parfitt carefully glues on items according to her whimsy at the moment, which may include dried flowers, dried pressed leaves, seedpods, feathers and threads from the fabric itself. Some of the flowers she grows on her own patio, such as pansies, petunias and impatiens; the leaves she often collects on nature hikes. Sometimes Parfitt forgoes the fabric, using instead a layer of her own delicate, handmade paper.
For a finishing touch, Parfitt encloses her cards in a thin, clear plastic "slip" that she seals with a sticker reading "Original by Mayo." The name is shortened form of her full name, Mary Elizabeth, given to her by her younger siblings when they were small children.
Parfitt's cards are available locally at Country Essences and Navlet's in Los Gatos--both on N. Santa Cruz Avenue--and at Paperfunalia on Big Basin Way in Saratoga. Now through May 28, some of her cards can be seen in an exhibition by the Los Gatos Art Association at the Triton Museum of Art in Santa Clara.
Parfitt also plans to teach a class in the craft at West Valley College in Saratoga this fall because, as she puts it, "there must be other people out there like me, who aren't necessarily artistic in arts like painting, but they're creative and are good at the tactile arts."
For more information, call 408.354.1403 or email todmom@aol.com.
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Los Gatos, California Since 1881
Mary Beth Parfitt says she isn't an artist, but she has a way with fabric and freeze-dried flowers.
