Together, Morgan Georgie & Carrie Kiefer make up the wildly fun Kansas City-based art and design partnership, Ampersand Design Studio. Carrie & Morgan’s combined style is modern, artful and always colorful! It’s life in the Midwest, their kids’ imaginations and their own long-time friendship that inspire Ampersand’s unique designs. Ampersand is where color and pattern come to play, so come join the party!

After earning a BFA in painting from Washington State University and spending a couple of decades fiddling with brushes, oils, pencils, markers, and most recently, the mouse attached to her computer, Cori Dantini has discovered an organic process involving layers and language. Any meaning found in her work comes from this process. She never begins a project with a message in mind. Rather, the materials and her process are what do the talking.

Elizabeth Olwen is a Canadian print and pattern designer living in Portugal. She prides herself on creating highly considered patterns and illustrations that are lovingly assembled, piece by piece, into something special. Inspired by the world around her—from the beautiful forests of Ontario, to the colours and tiles of Lisbon, to her cherished and plentiful travels abroad—Elizabeth’s work is driven by the desire to leave something beautiful behind with every step she takes.

Kimberly Shrack is the calligrapher and illustrator behind Hoopla! Letters (formerly Manayunk Calligraphy). She specializes in a modern brush script style, and is known for her work in calligrams (a fancy way of saying she creates silhouettes from words). A Midwest native, Kim currently lives in Phoenix, Arizona with her daughter, husband and buckets of sunscreen.

Rachael Schafer is an artist and illustrator based in San Francisco, CA. The wild nature, gardens, forests, towns, homes and cities she was surrounded by while growing up in Tennessee are ever-present sources of inspiration in her work. She is interested in how it is often difficult to tell the difference between actual history and folk tale mythology. She loves hand-drawn lettering, characters and color and all of these are present in her work in some combination.

Ine Beerten is a licensing artist from the vibrant city of Antwerp (Belgium). After starting out as a graphic designer, she discovered the wonderful world of surface pattern design and illustration. Nowadays, she is mostly focused on greeting card and stationery design and hand lettering. Her style is both colourful and playful, filled with lush florals or cute and quirky animals, and she loves to add beautifully hand-lettered text and quotes to her work. She calls her creative business ZESTI.