Hello and Welcome!
A Little Bit About Me
Welcome! My name is Michelle Rypinski, DBA "Mountain Maiden Made" Paper Crafts in San Bernardino County, Southern California, USA. I handmake all of the physical products for sale here at MountainMaidenMade.com.
I have been fascinated by and basically in love with paper for as long as I can remember. From the age of about four or five, I began trading stickers with my first friend, Veronica, who was my same age and lived down the street from me.
Stickers in the 1980's were very different and, in my humble opinion, way better than the stickers that are sold today (2020's). Back then, scratch-and-sniff was brand new technology on printed paper. So was holographic printing, adhesive velvet or "flocked" paper, and many, many other ways in which sticker designers and manufacturers were first experimenting with what also-brand-new computer technology could make practical and affordable for consumer sales. Of course, as a child everything was new to me anyway; but my and my friend's delight in and adoration of all the new variations of little, sticky-backed pieces of paper art knew no bounds.
As we began attending school and grew slightly older, our collections of stickers needed multiple albums to contain them all. Whenever our parents purchased new stickers and gave them to us, we eagerly compared and enthusiastically traded one or more stickers between us, building an economy of exchange based upon each sticker's most desirable qualities - exquisite and exotic scents, size (when really big stickers came out), cuteness of the art/image depicted, or novelty of the sticker's design (e.g., holographic image, really nice coloring by one or another of us on "color-your-own-stickers", super soft velvet or fuzzy material, etc.). Even today as both Veronica and I are fast approaching middle age our fondest memories of our childhoods revolve to a large extent around stickers. We still can argue about the very last sticker which Veronica wanted to trade with me and which I refused to give her - the "pinacolada"-pineapple/coconut-scented, beach chair and umbrella scene, ~1" x 2" sticker.
I recently visited with her and lent her the big sticker album in which I, as an adult, carefully preserved all of our most treasured stickers from youth and added stickers which I continued to collect well into adolescence. She joked that she finally got to "have" the beach chair sticker at least for a while!
So that's how my "paper crafting" began - by collecting stickers as a four-year-old!
My Story
From sticker-collecting in the 1980's to amassing hundreds of different types of personal journal writing blank books in which I hand-wrote my thoughts to carefully choosing college-ruled, highly portable, light weight yet durable notepads to accompany me throughout my ~20-year journey through college, graduate school, and my professional life as a teacher and beyond, paper and its infinite uses have been my lifelong companions. My father was a graphic artist prior to the inculcation of ubiquitous computing, digital machines in that trade. As a child, I watched my father repeatedly "cut and paste" with actual scissors or razor-edged pen-knife, paper or 1/4"-thick-foam-cored "cardboard", and glue or liquid cement long before these actions were reduced to trifling titles on digital buttons in a word-processing or graphic editing software program. My father's vocation and his many handmade models of his master-planned community clients' architecture and the signage which he was designing and proposing for them added substantially to my interest in and fascination with paper. I remain to this day starkly fascinated by all variants of the term "sheet" and "page", and how things created with one- or two-dimensional materials can translate into the three-dimensional world and convey important information beautifully to a public audience.
The world is a strange place and my formal, academic training and professional experiences may seem strange for someone making a new foray into the role of paid Paper Artist. Academically, I completed a Bachelor's degree in English Literature, a Master's degree in Public History, and both Preliminary and Clear Professional Teaching Credentials in English Language-Arts and Social Studies. Professionally, I have worked as a Computer Service Technician and Office Assistant for my now ex-husband's independent computer sales and service business; as a Graduate Teaching Assistant in the Department of History at University of California at Riverside; as a Substitute Teacher throughout multiple counties and school districts across Southern California; as a remote Reading Teacher for the Institute for Reading Development based in Novato, CA; and as a full-time Online High School 10th-grade and Advanced Placement English Teacher for California Virtual Academies based in Simi Valley, CA. Throughout these various experiences, I continued and in many ways enhanced and further informed my appreciation for paper, its fascinating history, and its contemporary uses.
In 2016, I unfortunately experienced a debilitating illness which rendered me unable to sustain full-time employment. Around that same time, my mother's death, other family losses, and the advent of the COVID epidemic left me quite literally crippled by grief for several years. During these years, paper crafting literally saved my life, forming the foundation of the artistic skills and knowledge about the industry of paper-cutting machines, digital svg files, and the legion of professional cardstock paper makers (e.g., Graphic45, Recollections, 12x12Cardstock, Doodlebug Design, etc.) which have now birthed my new effort to create a fledgling paper crafting small business of my own.
I'm so glad you're here! I hope you find inspiration and joy on this website. If you really see something you absolutely love, I hope that you will consider making a purchase in order to support my efforts. In return, you will receive a physical artwork which can be both greeting and keepsake for yourself or someone else to whom you give a special gift!
Contact
I'm always looking for new and exciting opportunities. Let's connect.
909-273-4208