There's something about fairies that appeals to the little girl in all of us, especially anyone who ever held ambitions of actually becoming a fairy - okay, that dream never came true, but the image will always transport us back to those more innocent times.

Fairies are a major feature in the exquisitely charming art of Berni Parker, who uses feminine colours and delicate techniques to create beautiful greetings cards, pictures and paintings. She also takes inspiration from flowers for her handcrafted works of art, still using the same method of gradually building colours and layers.

As well as greetings cards, which Berni has designed for various publishers over the last 20 years, she creates larger images in the fairy and flower ranges on canvas, and these are now available either as an original or a gicle print. The recently-developed gicle method allows an original piece to be photographically reproduced on to paper or canvas, while retaining its detail and quality.

Berni uses layers of handmade paper to give her original designs a textured, three-dimensional quality. She introduces watercolour, crayon, gouache and oil pastel underneath and in between the various layers, with the whole becoming a feathery, delightfully pretty celebration of all things 'girlie'.

While the fairy images undoubtedly appeal to young girls - lending an ideal finishing touch to a fairy-themed bedroom - the flowers, with their soft pastel hues, are stylish and contemporary enough to suit other areas of the home. "I was concerned that people might think they were a bit twee!" Berni admits, but both themes have proved extremely popular as cards and as artwork.

Stepping away from flowers and fairies, Berni has also created the 'Ladies who Lunch' range, depicting smartly-dressed women enjoying wine and company in various locations. These also feature the layered paper method, though not to such an extent, bringing the recognisable characters to the fore.

Her next project ("I'm itching to get on with it!") is a range of minimalistic, Japanese-inspired designs for greetings cards, involving pieces of coloured paper hand-ripped into tiny shapes to enhance each little drawing. This is quite a departure from her previous styles, but Berni says she loves to experiment and would get fed up doing the same thing all the time.

Specialising in illustration during her degree in graphic design, Berni originally wanted to design children's books, but instead became involved with the greetings cards industry. "It suited me because I'm an ideas person!" she says, "and I could work around my family commitments. But I really started designing seriously about five years ago."

After recovering from repetitive strain injury two years ago, which she blames on doing too many things at once, Berni began to create larger pieces and showed her work to the Eastcote gallery in Blakedown: "They encouraged me, and put my work forward for selection for the New Artist competition run by De Montfort, the fine art publishers."

This gave Berni the confidence to launch the gicle prints, and to exhibit her work at art shows. She is now involved with licensing, trying to interest companies in using her images on their products. An American company has already decided to make figurines of Berni's characters, and she is receiving plenty of interest at the shows.

"I'm not business-minded at all!" she comments, "but my husband John acts as my business manager - he runs a print company so he knows the trade."

This means Berni can concentrate on designing in her beautiful home studio, decorated in lilac (her favourite colour and ever-present in her work) and scented with lavender.

Living and working in the countryside of Far Forest, it's not too difficult to see how the rural scene inspires Berni's prolific creations. She will undertake commissions, or customers can choose to buy a print on paper (from £26), canvas (from £40), or an original (from £75). Berni also hand-embellishes prints, adding paper layers or glitter to make them extra-special.

Berni Parker Designs Tel: 01299 266831 www.berniparkerdesigns.com