By Hannah Barricks
Photos courtesy of Hannah Haston
Welcome to our playhouse!” says Catherine Cartie, a Weatherford watercolorist, designer and mother of three.
She’s in Aledo, bidding a guest to join her in the Kelly green room of Poppy House, a refurbished house-turned-creative office she shares with friends and interior designers Kelsey Sheets and Brandi Wood.
The group uses its “playhouse” to host events and demonstrations and test design theories before risking the real thing. The color palette inside is simply joyful, intentionally applied in southern shades, from the kitchen’s salmon pink walls and cabinets to the blue penny tiles on the powder room floors and the viridescent office where Cartie sits now, flanked by antique porcelain plates.
Across from her is the home’s only discernible stairwell, leading to a loft she uses as an office. Framed scarves from Cartie’s past collections and collaborations line the walls up to the second floor, where a liberal bay window provides the perfect natural light for painting, says the expert. It’s a beautiful room, with a few unfinished animal sketches lying haphazardly near open paints with tops still wet to prove she uses them.
The artist is at home in the room’s center. However, she admits not always knowing that’s what she was until motherhood awakened a familiar feeling known to the few who’ve felt it.
“I loved staying home with my first son,” she says. “But something in me itched for a creative release. Especially in those early years of motherhood, when things are upside-down and lonely. I needed something that was just for me.”
Cartie was a creative child, spending time at her grandmother’s home in Colorado, where she was happy.
“Those are some of my favorite memories,” she says. “My grandmother was an artist. We would pick wildflowers in the mountains, and she’d teach me how to paint.”
While considering creative outlets, Cartie landed herself in a calligraphy class after flipping through her wedding invitations and thinking the writing style looked fun.
“I loved it and felt fulfilled practicing during my son’s naps, but I never thought it would become a legitimate business,” she says.
But it did. By 2016, she was booking weddings, handling invitations and stationery from top to bottom, and accepted private commissions on the side.
“I added watercolors to the invitations to personalize them,” Cartie says. “I really love doing things like that, and feel people value it in return.”
However, in May 2020, the nationwide pandemic and its ensuing logistical challenges caused paper shortages, and Cartie was forced to pivot.
Catherine Cartie creates wearable art from a shared work space in Aledo, Texas. Photo by Hannah Haston.
“I had to streamline operations and realistically consider what I could scale as the sole employee writing invitations by hand,” she says. “So I shifted my focus to products.”
It would pay off, and a Christmas card line led to her first breakout non-paper item: a KN95-shaped ornament available in various seasonal prints with hollies or nutcrackers. The success propelled her product angle further, and she attended virtual manufacturing and distribution classes and eventually secured licensing and design partnerships that feed her business today.
“Watercolor is perfect for creating products because once I digitize the design, I can use it for anything,” she says. “Like my scarves.”
Amidst her creative renaissance, however, Cartie lost her first mentor in 2021 when her grandmother passed away.
“She left me a gorgeous orange and yellow scarf with butterflies all over it that I had framed in my house,” she says. “I saw yellow butterflies everywhere after that, and they evolved into a symbol for my business.”
In May of the same year, a friend challenged Cartie to complete a daily painting series spanning the month.
“So, I chose butterflies,” she says. “And it completely changed my business.”
Cartie says a community formed around the prints on her Instagram, conspicuously coming together with similar stories of bereavement, hope and renewal.
Local institutions and nonprofit organizations, including the Junior League of Fort Worth, the Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame, and Cook Children’s, will often commission Cartie for her signature scarves to commemorate special occasions and her Fort Worth-themed designs — seen on the likes of Fort Worth Mayor Mattie Parker — have become collectors’ items.
“It’s just really fun that I get to connect with so many amazing people through my work and their different brands,” she says. “Fort Worth has such a solid community that’s really supportive of each other.”