Handmade cards with inspirational text have been satisfying buyers since 1998

This special section of Spotlight was published in the Missourian on Oct. 21, 2021.

Photo courtesy of Oliver Gerard.

Kay Foley majored in psychology in college, but she really wanted to be a creative writer.

Later, she left a couple of jobs in counseling because she just wasn’t passionate about them.

Finally, after reading a book about ways to pursue her creative interests, she decided in 1998 to start a business making handmade cards that combine poetry with art.

“It was pretty natural,” Foley said. “It didn’t seem like an odd choice at the time because that’s kind of where my brain was all the time and my heart.”

Foley pieces her cards together as collages with torn handmade paper added to photographs she has taken. A poem or phrase written on the front of the card becomes the theme.

Her sister was the one who proposed making handmade cards as a business venture, but the distance between Foley and her sister in Tucson wasn’t easy to bridge, so Foley ended up making the cards herself.

“I wrote a bunch of verses,” she said. “I thought getting copyright permission from quotes would be too difficult.”

After some practice, she showed her cards to an agent who suggested she take them to Barbara McCormick, then owner of Poppy, the downtown store in Columbia. McCormick loved the fact that Foley was a poet.

“I will say that Kay Foley remains one of the most enduring and talented artists in Poppy’s 38-year history,” McCormick said. “Her unique talent as an artist and a poet form a winning combination of expression enjoyed by many.”

In addition to Poppy, her cards are sold at Stockton Mercantile, formerly Granny’s Antiques, in Rocheport, and a number of other retailers around the country. Many are located on the East Coast, including an outlet in the Virgin Islands.

“Technically, I have around 60, but since COVID began, only five or six have been ordering. I’m not even sure if some of those businesses are still around,” Foley said.

Orders can be placed either through her website or by emailing her directly. When Foley gets an order, she picks an appropriate card, places it in a sleeve and mails it to the customer. Each week she also sends Merry Thoughts blog posts to her customers and those who have signed up for emails.

Before finding her creative niche, Foley worked as a director at William Woods University. After working at William Woods, she became a therapist with alcoholic and drug-addicted women at a residential treatment center. She said it was a draining job that became especially difficult.

“It was not a good fit for me,” she said. “I cried all the time.”

Foley and her sister began to read “The Artist’s Way” by Julia Cameron, a book about discovering problems and pressure points that may stand in the way of unleashing a creative pursuit.

“It talks about accessing your creative self and taking the leap and doing anything that you want to do,” Foley said, “and so that’s basically what I did.”

Starting the business was a bigger risk for Foley because she had children.

“I was a single mom, didn’t get much child support at all and didn’t have much savings,” she said.

To make ends meet until her card business got off the ground, she taught piano lessons and edited courses for MU professors in Latin, algebra and anthropology in her free time.

After making cards became a successful outlet, she began to make larger collages to sell on her website.

“I was doing bigger pieces, all with writing on them, and collages with handmade paper. I started traveling out of state for art shows,” Foley said.

When the pandemic hit, she began to sell more of her cards wholesale to shops around the country

“Actually COVID was kind of good for me for my retail website business,” she said. “I actually sold more than I ever had before because nobody was going into shops and a lot of stores I think shut down.”

Patricia Knowles discovered Foley’s cards years ago and said she was instantly drawn into her work.

“I just thought she was so adventuresome and wacky, and also she could be simply profound,” Knowles said. “The way she drew, wove her materials together, I just marveled at her ability.”

A lot of Foley’s words resonated with Knowles.

“It’s kind of universal, but there’s just such a humanist thread running through her work,” she said. “There’s a generosity and a joy and a gratefulness, and she has an adventuresome spirit that shines through all of her work and an optimism.”

Knowles doesn’t just buy them for herself but said she shares Foley’s work with others.

“I love sending them to friends, and I always get grateful responses,” Knowles said. “I have a friend who lives in Rhode Island who has a whole collection that I send her, and she puts them on her desk next to her computer.”

Elizabeth Tucker began to buy birthday cards for everyone she knew when she started working at Poppy in 2004.

“Kay has a way of capturing feelings, thoughts, observations and dreams so beautifully and so simply,” Tucker said. “She finds exactly the right words when the rest of us cannot.”

Tucker says that no one who comes into her store buys just one of the cards.

“They might come in for just one, but they always find just the right card that they didn’t know they were looking for a friend or lover,” she said. “There are lots of giggles coming from Kay’s section, too.”

As clever and lovely as the cards are, Tucker said they don’t hold a candle to Foley herself.

“We are just lucky that she chooses to share herself in the world in that way,” she said. “We all benefit by looking clever, lovely and smart to the people we choose to send her cards to.”