giftbandit.com™ and Traces of Heaven, Inc.

Mariette Fredericks, Owner, began in the print industry in 1978 as a typesetter, artist, plate-maker (negative film), back in the day. In 1993, she started a part-time business and named it Traces of Heaven, selling invitations, personalized stationery and gifts from her home.

As she began selling these items, her heart longed for more “creativity and design” in her life. Her customers began to see the fruits of her labor as she added more product lines. A personal quest begin to collect Christmas cards, for personal use, to make gifts for her friends and family, which launched her into a new product and design direction. Mariette began cutting and shaping (by hand) Christmas cards into gift tags as a way to dress up or personalize gifts. She would run a colorful “rubber band” thru a hole at the top of the cut out, and then band it around her gifts….Hence, the name Gift Bandit! In early 2000, after creating and giving away hundreds of Christmas gift tags, the name giftbandit was officially born!

Years later, after not seeing this unique process (still not) done by any stationery vendor, she decided it was time to get to work on a website for her business. She incorporated the giftbandit tags with her every day invitation and stationery lines, and began giftbandit.com in 2004. And as of 2010 NO STATIONERY manufacturer is yet to produce a gift tag with a stretchy cord to band around their gifts.

With Mariette heading up the design and personalization of each product, the company has grown to service thousands of customers over a span of 10+ years. She still continues to meet the needs of her invitations, stationery and calligraphy orders every day.

In addition to the original giftbandit gift tags, Mariette took the Gift Bandit logo and created a new line of paper products called “girlfriends® ” (pretty stationery passed among girlfriends) and has truly enjoyed introducing it the line to her girlfriends, family and existing customers. The line offers matching invitations, stationery, note cards, luggage tags, candy wrapper party favors, stickers, car magnets plus a whole lot more!

With the help of Mariette’s children, daughter Margaret and son Johnny, doing the counting, inspecting and packaging products for customers, and her husband John working a bit here and there with bookkeeping and expenses, giftbandit is truly “all in the family” business.

We like to keep the name Traces of Heaven, as it reflects our values and many customers still know us by this name. But the GiftBandit business remains relatively small so that we are able to make time for worship, serving, enjoy extra-curricular activities, family, friends, travel and other neighborhood functions.

We are so blessed to have the dedicated assistance of Sarah Inserra-Lee (yes that is her REAL name) who helps with sales, marketing, custom invitations, and trade shows, and pretty much anything that we toss her way like a Facebook fan page coming soon.

We are all so thankful for the many opportunities and blessings, through this business, as well as the loyalty of our customers and referrals, that inspire the fanciful designs that burst out of Mariette’s heart daily, but we would like to give credit to the Lord, for making it all happen and for the joy that comes from it.

Please tell us what you think by sending your comments. Join our mailing list or send a comment thru the buttons at the top of our website. This is the safest way on the internet to contact us (helping us avoid spam crawlers).  We look forward to hearing from you soon!