How Budugalee Came to Be
Budugalee was started the way all good businesses should be started, via a challenge. In 2011 Bernie was blogging up a storm and joined a creativity challenge to try new things for the new year. Since she already excelled at eating too much and drinking Diet Coke like it was going out of style, she decided to try her hand at being crafty. She attempted rubber stamping cards and that didn't go well at all. Her cards looked like a shaky two year old crank baby made them. They were sloppy and really quite hideous. Only her mother claimed to like them, but not enough to put them up on the refrigerator. They were special, but not that special.
Bernie decided to go back to the drawing board. She stumbled onto vintage type images while eating too much; drinking Diet Coke like it was water or something; and surfing the web one night. Eureka! Pre-made images that she could drag and drop into some kind of design software and make something pretty. Little did she know that this would become an obsession. Her problem was that she didn't have a clue how to do what she wanted to do. That is when she started to whine, badger, beg her husband for his expertise. After a bit of grumbling and sighing that only husbands know how to do, he agreed to help. Mr. Bernie sat her in front of a computer and tutored her to use Corel Draw. She gradually brought her Budugalee skills up to standard. Corel Draw is like playing with Color-forms as a child, only with a powerful program instead of plastic pieces that you have to lick and stick.
The next problem to overcome was deciding what to do with the images after printing them off. After years of swearing that she would never buy card or paper stock, Bernie started hoarding papers to use for backgrounds of her images. Here is where Mr. Bernie had to help again. Bernie can’t cut a straight line if her life depended on it. It was time to coerce Mr. Bernie to cut designs and reams of card stock to size. You do not have to tell him that he is a lucky man. He loves nothing more than standing at a huge paper cutter and cutting card stock and images. If you believe that he loves to do it, then I have a bridge to sell you. However, when weighing whether to endure Bernie’s Budugalee whining or just cutting paper, he chooses to cut - The paper that is, not himself or Bernie.
Some of the images and card stock are not straight. It couldn't be a Budugalee card if it was perfect. The whole idea of keeping the cards hand made and with purposefully imperfect assembly makes them all the more perfect. Bernie decided to try a few craft shows and people seemed to like her designs and snarky cards. Even her mother started displaying Budugalee cards on her refrigerator. Her friends on Facebook thought they were funny. Heck why not try to branch out and see if other people who didn't know her and wouldn't be worried about her feelers would like to buy the greeting cards?
Budugalee started to be sold in a Pennsylvania book store. Local stores followed. Friends kept urging her to have a website and sell her cards more widely. Since you are reading this About section, we know that she bowed to peer pressure and convinced Mr. Bernie to help get the Budugalee website going. If you have read this far, then you really should buy a card as a reward for the torture of reading the Budugalee history.
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