Welcome to Line & Blossom Design

Some art asks you to look at it. Mine asks you to look into it.

Line & Blossom Design is a one-woman botanical art studio built on a simple idea, that the best art rewards the patient eye. Every piece combines intricate botanical line art with a hidden layer of discovery. Look closer and you’ll find creatures, curiosities, and characters woven into the composition. And somewhere in every single piece, a small vintage key is waiting to be found.

This is botanical line art designed to be lived with, not just looked at. Art that reveals something new every time you return to it. Botanical line art that becomes a little more yours with every visit.

An Unexpected Journey

I came to art late. Very late.

In my early 50’s, I decided I wanted to paint. Specifically I wanted to be the Bob Ross of watercolor landscapes. What followed was a series of spectacular failures that convinced me of one uncomfortable truth, if I was ever going to paint, I had to accept that I needed to learn to draw first. Something I had deliberately avoided even considering until so many monumental fails.

So I bought a book. You Can Draw in 30 Days by Mark Kistler. And somewhere in those 30 days, something unexpected happened. I fell in love with drawing itself. The watercolor landscapes didn’t go quietly, I fought for them through an embarrassingly expensive collection of brushes, paints, and paper before finally accepting that my heart had moved on without telling me.

What I didn’t know then — what I wouldn’t discover until mid 2025, was that I had been creating art without something most artists take completely for granted. I have aphantasia. My mind’s eye is completely blank.

Close your eyes and picture an apple. Most people see something, vivid color, a specific shape, maybe even a particular apple from memory. The scale below shows the spectrum of mental visualization, from photorealistic clarity all the way to complete absence.

Credit: Wikimedia Commons

I am a solid number 5 on the above scale. Nothing. Just darkness.

I didn’t even know a mind’s eye was a real thing until I stumbled across an article about aphantasia and felt the strange relief of of finally knowing why so many art tutorials, instructional books and videos didn’t make sense to me.

I can’t pre-visualize a composition. I can’t plan a color palette in my head. Every piece I create is discovered as it’s drawn — emerging line by line on the screen in front of me, surprising even me as it takes shape. It turns out that’s not a limitation. It’s just a different way of seeing.

Close-up: Part of the sky from Midnight Mischief © Leona Smith

The Botanical Line Art

The hidden objects started with a housewarming gift.

In 2022 I created a botanical collage for a friend. As the piece neared completion I had an idea, I would hide each family member’s initial somewhere in the composition. Just for them. Just because it felt like a meaningful thing to do.

That simple act of personalization made me realize how much more fun my art could be.

Today every piece I create is a botanical line art composition with a secret life. Dense arrangements of flowers and foliage that reward the patient eye with hidden creatures, curious objects, and small moments of joy tucked into unexpected places. A grasshopper on a stem. A tiny frog in the leaves. A rubber duck on a tire swing. Each piece contains its own cast of hidden friends, and every single one hides a small vintage key, my signature, present in every work I create.

I chose the key deliberately. A key suggests something waiting to be unlocked, a story, a meaning, a memory. What that means in each piece is something I leave entirely to you. If you want to know why a key became my signature, the full story is in the blog.

The hidden elements now number over 100 and growing. Whimsical ones, deeply personal ones, and ones that will test the patience of even the most dedicated hunter. Rest assured though, all of them are intentional.

How I Do Business

Every decision I make at Line & Blossom Design starts with one question, would I be happy with this as a customer?

Every print is made to order, produced to museum quality standards, and shipped with care. I don’t cut corners on materials because you deserve better than that and your trust matters more than my margins. Every piece leaves with archival pigment inks on archival paper because your art should still be beautiful decades from now.

My business philosophy is simple, every customer should be treated with respect. This mean respecting your privacy, your inbox, and your time. I do not share your personal information nor do I spam your inbox with marketing emails. My policies are written in plain language because you should not need a law degree to understand them.

Line & Blossom Design is a one-woman operation. Every piece of botanical line art, every listing, every word, on this website was created by one person, me, who genuinely loves what she makes. When you buy from here you are not feeding an algorithm or funding a corporation. You are supporting a 60 year old self-taught artist with aphantasia, a senior Mini Aussie at my feet as I draw , and an embarrassingly large collection of unused watercolor supplies.

Every photograph on this site is my own, taken over the years from gardens, roadsides, and wherever something beautiful stopped me in my tracks. Just like the botanical line art, nothing here came from a stock library.

I hope my botanical line art brings you as much joy as it brings me to make it.

A Note From Me, Leona

Thank you for taking the time to read my story. It still surprises me that I have one worth telling.

If you had told me in 2020 that in a few years I would be a working artist with a shop full of hidden object botanical line art, a signature vintage key in every piece, and a diagnosis that finally explained a lifetime of creative quirks, I would have laughed you out of the room.

And yet here we are.

My wish for you, find the key, lose yourself in the details, and discover something in the leaves, stems, and hidden corners that makes you smile or better yet Laugh Out Loud.

— Leona