Business lets moms use creativity to record pregnancy

Michael and Paola Dias are passionate about bringing creativity to pregnancy and capturing it through art. Inspired by Paola’s own pregnancy, they decided to launch a new business venture, Art Bellies.

Art Bellies offers kits designed to help expectant mothers turn the shape of their bellies into artistic prints. Each kit is $45 and contains an assortment of handmade materials imported from Thailand. They include portrait paper, calligraphy brushes, Japanese sumi-e ink, a paint dish and an instruction booklet.

When the suburban California couple moved to rural New Hampshire last summer they didn’t know many people and kept to themselves. They soon discovered Paola Dias was pregnant and wanted to express their excitement by charting the baby’s growth with her belly. Similar to charting a child’s growth on the wall with hash marks, the couple traced Paola’s belly every few weeks on their closet door with watercolors.

“We were trying to take a series and a sequence and record it artistically instead of linearly,” said Michael Dias, 34, a furniture worker at Cold River Furniture in Ackworth. “It looked like Japanese-inspired art.”

After experimenting with different art materials, they played around with colors, forms and contrast all while maintaining a natural, earth tone.

“There was something about the simplicity and the contrast of the colors and elegance and the grace that we really liked,” Michael Dias said. “It wasn’t about making art, it was about sharing the experience.”

Paola Dias, 32, a Spanish teacher at High Mowing School, said a pregnancy goes by quickly and families can get caught up in planning the birth.

“The kits give them that time to stop and think, let’s capture this magical moment,” she said.

The couple sent kits to family and friends who were pregnant and had positive feedback, so they decided to take it a step further. After a successful debut at the Greenerborough Expo & Festival in Peterborough last April, they sought out higher quality products for the kits.

“We kept doing it the wrong way,” Michael Dias said. “I know the right business model is everything is supposed to be cheaper, faster, exported. I don’t think all of our clients are artistic, so all of our products have to shine through.”

Although they admit their business model is a little upside down, they are happy with their progress and boast they have gotten kit requests from as far away as Australia.

“Anybody can do it and look really good,” Michael Dias said, who says he isn’t very artistic. “It’s just a case of having the right materials and the right package. Someone with zero artistic ability can put it together and have it ready to frame and hang on the wall.”

The kits are available from their Web site and in three retail stores in New Hampshire, including Mother & Child Clothing and Gifts in Nashua. In the upcoming months they plan on expanding their reach with retailers, affiliates and working directly with customers. They only recently started to focus on the business again because they have been consumed with the recent birth of their daughter, Nisa.

The husband and wife team are sensitive to the difficult economic times and realize the cost of a kit can be prohibitive. They have given them away as gifts or held demonstrations where women can get the prints.

“Cost should never be a factor in bringing beauty into your pregnancy and art into that special time,” Michael Dias said.

They will provide a free demonstration at Mother & Child Clothing and Gifts in Nashua on Saturday from 12:30 p.m. to 4 p.m. They hope to see pregnant women with friends and families ready to make prints, which take a few minutes to complete.

“We really just want to bring that artistic aspect to pregnancy and make women feel really good about their bodies and themselves and use colors to express that creativity,” Paola Dias said.

They plan to provide future retail demonstrations around New Hampshire over the holiday season.

The weekend event will be their first retail demonstration. Previously they have been in hospitals, birthing centers and trade shows.

The kits are not for everybody, Michael Dias said. But it is for anyone who shows a small desire to capture their pregnancy in a new way, he said.