Hi there! I’m the creative spirit and energy force behind Quirky Pickle Studio, where retro vibes meet modern design. Born in the groovy 1970s and raised among free-spirited hippies, flower power, and Saturday morning cartoons, I developed an early appreciation for bold colors, playful patterns, and the kind of authentic joy that defined that era.

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My design aesthetic is heavily influenced by the comic books I treasured, the psychedelic art that surrounded me, and those unforgettable vintage patterns that covered everything from wallpaper to bell-bottoms. This nostalgic foundation now infuses my work with a distinctive blend of throwback charm and contemporary appeal.

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Every pattern, notepad, sticker, and sheet of stationery here is made with the quiet hope that you’ll set down your phone, pick up a pen, and write something to someone you love.

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Raised Among Makers

I grew up in the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s, surrounded not just by wildly vibrant colors and designs, but also by the freedom to be independent, always encouraged and supported by my two creative, motivated parents. When I was two, my father opened Atlantis Waterbeds in Gulfport, Mississippi, and grew it to four locations: Gulfport, North Biloxi, and Gautier, Mississippi, and Mobile, Alabama. I spent my childhood in the showrooms and in the warehouses where beds were custom-made by hand, often playing teacher in the back of the store while my parents worked.

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After Hurricane Hugo, my dad came to Charleston to help rebuild, fell in love with the Lowcountry, and moved our family here for good in 1990.

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My dad gave me a strong work ethic, and an example of leading with compassion, patience, and understanding toward family and employees alike. My mom gave me grit and reinvention. At 16, after a military move had separated them, she ran away from Massachusetts to Mississippi to marry my dad. She later earned her GED and went back to college as the mother of two teenage girls, earning her degree in radiologic technology and going on to work with infants, a job she loved. My mom worked alongside my dad in the waterbed business, then built her own career in real estate and opened other businesses of her own. All the while, she showed up for every school event and every need at home, and she was even my Brownie and Girl Scout troop leader for a while!

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Together, my parents raised my sister and me to be kind, open-minded, and creative, and to know that hard work can take you anywhere.

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I have always been surrounded by inspiring, hardworking family, every one of them in my corner. Summers spent with my mom’s parents meant watching my grandmother work hard as a nurse. My father’s mother, a former English teacher, helped teach me to read on her lap with old photographs and poetry. And my mom’s stack of Archie comics showed me how pictures and stories can live side by side on the same page. That pairing of art and words has shaped everything I have made since.

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How “Quirky Pickle” Was Born

Quirky Pickle began years before the studio, as a parenting blog. I was raising two young children and running into all the moments parents know well . . . the ones where you have no idea what to do next. With my mom gone and no longer there to call for advice (I lost her to breast cancer when my first child was not even two years old), each of those moments felt like a real “quirky pickle.” So I wrote about them and found my way through hard times with creativity and a little innovation, and the name stuck.

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In 2019, after decades of running the business side of a construction company, I gave my lifelong love of visual design a home of its own: Quirky Pickle Studio. I draw original illustrations and patterns in Procreate and Adobe Creative Suite, in a happily retro style inspired by comic books, vintage wallpaper, and the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s I grew up in.

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Carrying the Quirky Pickle name into the studio felt natural. Every design began the same way my blog posts had . . . as a small puzzle waiting for a creative answer.

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The heart of the studio has always been paper. I design personalized stationery meant to be used: notecards, letter sheets, and notepads so cheerful and so clearly yours that they practically ask to be written on. A text disappears in a scroll, but a handwritten letter gets tucked in a drawer, pinned to a corkboard, and reread years later.

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Today the shop offers original stationery, handmade notepads and paper goods, stickers, apparel, and digital pattern downloads for fellow makers.

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Making Penpals Again

When COVID kept everyone at home, I watched kids losing their connection to one another. So I grew Quirky Pickle into a penpal club for kids and teens: Quirky Pickle Sticker Pals, with letters and personalized stickers arriving in the mail.

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I started it the simplest way I could. I created a short web form asking interested families for a mailing address, an age group, and a few favorite interests. I personally paired every child by hand and kept each match in a little green notebook I still have today, the “Official Book of Quirky Pickle Sticker Pals – Private.” Before long, kids were trading letters with new friends across the United States and as far away as Austria, Luxembourg, Germany, and Canada.

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The club was so loved that parents started asking for a group of their own, so I added one for adults. Word spread, and soon grown-ups without kids were joining too, missing the nostalgia of writing to friends across the country on paper, decorating envelopes, and tucking in meaningful or funny stickers.

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Every pack included writing prompts for all ages, for anyone who didn’t know where to begin. Each age group also received a one-page brain teaser themed to that month’s pack, like a word search, a maze, or a coloring page for the youngest writers.

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Those letters did something big. Children who had never mailed a letter started running to the mailbox, decorating envelopes, and filling pages with drawings and questions. I received kudos from parents, especially those who were reminiscing about their own childhoods writing to penpals, collecting stickers, or cherishing special stationery. Without ever feeling like homework, kids practiced spelling, built vocabulary, learned to tell a story, and fell in love with words.

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During the pandemic, I also briefly tested a classroom version with Title I schools before closures cut it short. That early idea grew into Quirky Pickle ClassPals™, now offered to schools nationwide. Today, the Quirky Pickle Sticker Pals name lives on in the shop’s sticker characters and playful pickle goods, a happy reminder of where it all started.

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From Stationery to a Foundation

Watching those penpals grow made one thing clear to me. Although a sticker pack could spark a love of writing, many kids and adults needed much more. They needed books, supplies, real instruction, and someone in their corner. And I saw the biggest quirky pickle of all, our nation’s low literacy rates, a problem that called for creativity, innovation, and community work bigger than any shop.

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So in 2026, I founded the Quirky Pickle Education Foundation (QPEF), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit working to raise literacy rates across America, for young learners and for adults who never got the chance to learn. QPEF puts free books, writing materials, and prompts into communities, is pairing classrooms as handwritten penpals, and dreams of opening its first literacy center right here in Charleston. I am also earning my Master of Education in Literacy, to be completed by February 2028, so the work rests on real expertise.

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Today the studio and the foundation grow side by side, with me working in a happy dual role. All of QPEF’s workshops, including the Quirky Pickle Language Lab™, now live under the foundation, so every workshop dollar goes to the nonprofit mission. Quirky Pickle Studio brings the style and artistry, such as the illustrations, patterns, and playful design behind QPEF’s curriculum and learning tools. Plus, every pen-to-paper product the studio sells nudges one more person back toward the page, where learning sticks.

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Write Something Wonderful

Every time you choose a notecard over a quick text, you keep a beautiful habit alive. Every time you buy from this little studio, you support the creativity behind the bigger work. Thank you for being part of both.

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Now go find a pen. Someone out there would love to hear from you.

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In a world of plain pickles, why not be quirky?

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Jennifer Partin · Founder and Designer, Quirky Pickle Studio
Learn more about the mission: QPEF.org

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