Daily Tribune Feature 12.30.11

Framing A Success Story

By Bonnie Caprara

When April McCrumb was a student at Eastern Michigan University in the mid-’90s, she earned her spending money making paper crafts and selling her goods at art fairs.

“It was a pretty cool way to make $100 a day as a college student,” McCrumb says.

McCrumb eventually got her degree in special education but never went on to teach. Instead, she launched her part-time hobby into a full-fledged business empire, which is based on A.I. Paper Design where she is the creator of handcrafted picture frames, photo albums, collages and magnets.

Each of her creations are based around colorful and whimsical paper art that she combines with ribbons, findings and uplifting sayings that commemorate the happiest of happiest moments that people display in the pictures of her picture frames.

“I’ve always been creative, always been a big fan of paper, and I’ve always loved words, colors and textures,” says McCrumb, “I’m a positive person, and I’m influenced by my customers, too. I have customers asking for a variety of themes.”

A.I. Paper Design products are designed around several themes — friendship, family, good times, weddings, pets and cooking, one of her favorite pastimes.

Over the years, McCrumb’s studio have moved from her college apartment to her first home in Oak Park and then to what is now her flagship Catching Fireflies store in Berkley.

“When we opened, we doored it off,” McCrumb says. “There was a small store in the front that sold all the A.I. Paper goods and had the workshop in the back.”

In fact, it was the success of A.I. Paper that allowed McCrumb to open Catching Fireflies.

“We were able to open Catching Fireflies without taking out a loan,” McCrumb says.

When the demand for her handcrafted gift items outgrew the studio in the back end of her Berkley store and the success of the store took over the workshop, she moved production to a studio in Royal Oak. During those years, she has gone from selling her work at art fairs to having them stocked in 400 gift shops across the United States.

They’re transitions she couldn’t have made without her husband, Steve, who left his teaching job three years after the couple graduated from college in 1998 to run the business, which now includes a second Catching Fireflies store in Rochester, and a second Berkley gift shop, Yellow Door Art Market.

Yellow Door Art Market features handmade items from over 60 Michigan artists, local student artists, Michigan-made foods, and a selection of books written by Michigan authors in a boutique setting that’s open seven days a week.

By opening Yellow Door Art Market, McCrumb says, “I felt it was a way to give them some exposure.”

Today, the success of A.I. Paper Design has allowed McCrumb to leave the day-to-day operations of her stores in the hands of her managers and staff, not to mention the expansion of the Catching Fireflies’ inventories to include a range of stationery, trinkets, jewelry, handbags and gift items that have earned the stores the distinction of HOUR Detroit’s Best Gift Shop five years in a row.

“I buy stuff for the store that’s clever, unique and fun,” McCrumb says. “You have to be different and buy things that touch people and make them feel good. It’s a big part of who we are.”

McCrumb now spends most of her time creating new items for A.I. Paper Design, which will come out with a whole new line of products, about 60 in all, in January.