By Tom Interval
When Kathy Werling got her first computer three years ago, she had no idea that she would someday start her own home-based business: Computer Creations by Kathy.
Werling, a 43-year-old mother of three, started working in the business full-time about a year ago, after her husband, Fran, died.
She targets consumers or small businesses who want customized greeting cards, calendars, buttons, certificates, mugs, napkins, paper bags, mouse pads, flyers, brochures, business cards and other items.
“I’m a step below Kinko’s and Office Max,” says Werling. “I prefer to deal in small quantities of something. I try to fill that little niche that the big boys can’t do.”
While most of her clients are consumers, Werling says she wants to accommodate more businesses. “I’d like to eventually get it so that it’s 50-50, like consumers who need five or ten cards every now and then, and then have small businesses where I would send out greeting cards once a month to their employees or do their calendar for the year.”
When clients walk into Werling’s home in Glenshaw, the first room they see is the living room, or, as Werling likes to call it, “corporate headquarters.” She has enough work-related stuff strewn about to make even Oscar Madison want to clean it up. But there’s a reason for the techno-mess. Werling is in the process of having one of her bedrooms converted into an office, which won’t be finished for a few weeks. Until then, she has to put up with the cramped space.
“I’m tired of moving from room to room,” she says. “I just sort of picture this [living room] as being my reception area and that [bedroom] will be the studio.
“So it will be like a real living room where we could have coffee, chit chat and then I can take you into the office and show you what it is that I’ve created for you.”
To make her “creations,” Werling has eight computers, six printers and several other accessories, a far cry from what she had three years ago: an IBM XT, her first computer. She used it in her former job mainly for word processing and to make banners. “In my other life, I did safety; I talked to people about car seats and seatbelts for different organizations.
“When I’d go out and have to do demonstrations and have to have a little sign saying what the name of my business was, and that I could create it on my computer at home, I just thought that was so neat. That was the thing that sold me.”
With her newer equipment, Werling deftly manipulates type styles, color photographs, clip art and other images to create the desired effect. “The main program that I use is Print Artist,” she says. “And Hallmark has a card program that sort of inspires me; and then I go on from there.
“You sort of take pieces from here, there and everywhere. Sometimes I’ll even create half of a [greeting card] in the one program and then take it into the other program and jazz it up.”
But Werling uses more than computer programs. Her background in crafts adds a special touch to her work. For example, on the cover of an Easter card she recently made, she used puff-paint to accent a computer-generated color drawing of a basket full of eggs. And she wrote the caption inside: “Remember Humpty Dumpty who said: Don’t put all your eggs in one basket! Hopping you have a good Easter!”
Werling says that, although sometimes her clients approach her with ideas, she usually comes up with them herself, often at the least-expected times. “Sometimes I get inspired if I’m driving down the road,” she says. “That’s how I do it. All of a sudden, when I’m not supposed to be thinking about it is when I come up with my ideas.”
Werling, who knew nothing about graphic design three years ago, took several computer classes at Community College of Allegheny County, north campus. She says she immediately caught on. “I took an introduction to computers class. I saw all these people sitting there saying, ‘Oh, this is just so hard.’ And I went, ‘Wow, this is neat.’
“I don’t feel like what I do is so unique that somebody else couldn’t do it; but I’ve taken the time to learn how to do it. I’ve come a long way from not knowing anything about a computer.”
And Werling has passed on a lot of her computer know-how to her children. “All three of my kids can do stuff on computers that most people can’t, just by hanging around watching their mom.
“I hope I’m setting an example for my kids to see that, through everything that has happened. I went from nothing to having a business.”
Werling says she likes to think of her work as her therapy. “I like having my own business because it rises and falls on me rather than when I worked for somebody else; you know, you did the work, they took the credit.
“Here, if I fail, I can blame myself; and if something goes right, I can pat myself on the back and say that I did it for myself. That’s the best thing about all of this.”
Kathy Werling occasionally has a booth at craft shows, business fairs and the Wildwood Peddler’s Fair (Sundays). You can reach her at 487-0311.
