Our Story

Belle Jar Co. was started in 2020 by Catherine Bobalek.

She (a lover of gift giving) struggled to find greeting cards and gifts for family members and friends that would fully and personally capture what she was trying to say and still be meaningful and thoughtful - and then pair it with a fun yet practical gift. Tired of trudging through aisles trying to find greeting cards that weren’t the same stereotypical, gendered, trendy, or overdone sentiments that didn’t fit the people in her life, she remembered she spent a bunch of money on art school. So, she put her degree to use and started designing cards and gifts to fit the people she was gifting to.

The goal of Belle Jar Co. is to both:

1. To create cards that capture a moment and feel personalized - that it could have been made for you (or your card recipient) - while being inclusive, stereotype-squashing, and cute!

2. To create functional, beautiful-to-cute, stress-and-anxiety-reducing items to gift to the people you care about. Gifting can be a fine line between thoughtful, meaningful, tangible, and experiential (while not ending up another piece of junk in their home), but nothing straddles those lines better* than a beautiful and functional object that politely yells: “Hey you! Take care of you and your mental health!” while bringing joy or looking glamorous**

*There are no formal studies, but trust a Veteran Gifter who has been repeatedly and frustratedly called the “Leslie Knope of Gift Giving”

**None of our gifts will yell at your gift recipients