She remembers, as a child, creating coordinating stationery for friends.

“I was always a doodler,” she said.

But these days, her visions have gotten a little bigger.

The 36-year-old Wyomissing woman has spun her interest in art into a successful handbag design business.

As owner and designer for Daisy Janie, a line of fabric handbags selling in boutiques throughout the United States, DiCintio turns visions of energetic geometric shapes into fabrics she uses to make casual yet artistic handbags.

DiCintio has little formal art training — with a degree in marketing, she worked for a variety of businesses before pursuing more artistic careers.

The marketing experience no doubt was helpful in building her business — she said her product sales more than doubled this year, compared to last. The company was founded in February 2005.

And the scope of her business has expanded as well, from mostly regional sales in its first year to selling hundreds of bags wholesale to boutiques throughout the country.

“I'm selling all over the country on a regular basis,” she said.

But sitting at her living room table on a recent weekday morning, it was her artistic side that shone through.

Design samples

The wall of this room — like most of the rooms in the house was hand-painted by DiCintio, a reminder of her former job custom painting designs on other people's walls.

The walls in the floor level of her home share similar color schemes — greens, browns and yellows — and similar designs of geometric shapes, with swirls of leaves and vines running up between painted “tiles.”

But despite the color around her, DiCintio was dressed simply, wearing a long-sleeve, button-down black shirt over a white tee, and a pair of light blue jeans, over which she sported a fabric belt colored with bright ovals, resembling the designs she creates for her handbags. A necklace of interlocking, square silver links and beads completed the outfit.

DiCintio said her bags reflect her own sense of style.

“I like a lot of pattern, but not on me,” she said.

She said she'd rather the color and patterns in her outfit be in accessories than on her clothing.

“That's my style, so that's what comes out in the bags, too,” she said.

But the bags represent more than just styles she would wear.

Extension of personality

Like her home decor, the fabrics she designs are bright, geometric, balanced and cheerful.

“Everything really is an extension of me,” she said.

DiCintio described the technique she uses to create her bags' designs as similar to the way she paints, especially the hand-painted mirror frames for which she used to be a juried member of the Chester County Craft Guild.

Those frames — made of corkboard shaped by curved lines and points surrounding a mirror — are painted in layers of bright, boldly colored paints.

The designs have sharply delineated lines separating one section of design from another, and within each section, geometric patterns like circles and squares are filled in with dots and squiggles and outlined in contrasting colors.

The end effect is of popping colors and appealing designs that, while filling the space, don't feel busy.

Her fabric designs, created with graphic software, are similar, with layered images one on top of each other until she creates a design with the right feel: detailed, but also balanced and symmetrical.

“All of the (fabric) designs are very similar to how I paint — the color, the texture,” she said. “Something, in the end, that has depth and character.”

A single design could take anywhere from one hour — if she has no trouble translating her vision to the computer — to a week.

Still appealing

“It has to hit me right,” she said.

Besides the fabrics, DiCintio also designs the structure and style of each bag, and in doing so, also tries to keep in mind what she would favor in a bag.

She said she worked hard to find a lining material that would give her bags structure, so they could be set on a table or the floor without losing their shape.

Because she likes a bag that's easy to sling over her shoulder, a medium-size bag has an adjustable strap that can be held in the hand or lengthened to let the bag rest on the hip.

And her first design — which remains a popular one due to its size — is the “Big Mama,” which she describes in press material as “designed for moms with toddlers, ready to transition from a 'large-Marge-carry-everything-including-the-kitchen-sink' diaper bag to a 'smaller-but-still-roomy-carry-the-basics-and-look-good-when-I'm-out' bag.”

In putting each bag together, she sews up sample bags to test out her designs, although the sewing on her finished products is done by an outside contractor.

She eschews hardware — metallic accents like zippers and rings — in her bags.

“I want the fabric to stand out,” she said. “This is artwork ... it happens to be on a bag — that's just the canvas it's on.”

For the same reason, she said that while she tries to stay knowledgeable about accessory trends, she also tries not to let them influence her designs too much.

“I really wanted to set my work apart,” she said. “And I really wanted to approach it as an artist.”

She's at work on her spring 2007 line, expanding the number of styles she carries, and is looking at introducing more innovative business practices to give boutiques the option of ordering custom-designed bags.

And she said she can see her designs appearing on many more products in the future: clothing, furniture fabrics, even stationery.