The Lake Norman region is home to more than the state's vast "inland sea" and its hundreds of miles of shoreline that etch the borders of our towns into the map. The broader business community has settled in locally and is steadily increasing its footprint on this once quiet and largely rural piece of the Piedmont.

The heart of Mooresville now races to the sounds of several NASCAR teams, while the world headquarters of Lowe's Home Improvement hammers out profits there in steady time.

The North American top shop for Ingersoll Rand — a $14 billion global industrial company — is nestled in the bucolic confines of Davidson.

The fabric of Cornelius' diverse business sector is a blend of community banking headquarters, manufacturing, the arts and tourism, while its neighbor just to the south, Huntersville, has evolved into a regional hotbed for national and international businesses.

The likes of Irwin Tools and Newell Rubbermaid now call the town home, as well as big names in the clean energy sector, several European manufacturers and our very own, home-grown Metrolina Greenhouses, the largest single-site greenhouse in the country.

But who knew one of the premiere artists at the center of the crafting universe — a multibillion-dollar international industry — has quietly parked her studio and classroom in a tiny storefront on Old Statesville Road?

Apparently, it's only a secret to us locals, because women (the majority of crafters, especially scrapbookers) from around the world know the name Donna Downey, and rely heavily on both her Internet presence and her personal appearances at workshops and conventions around the globe for the ideas and materials that inspire their art.

Bill Downey, her husband/business partner/agent, says her Web site gets about 10,000 hits a day. She's in demand abroad, traveling internationally to hold workshops or appear at conventions about six times a year, and since incorporating back in 2003, her business continues to grow annually by about 25 percent. Bill says he expects this year to hit nearly $800,000 in revenue, between Donna's online product sales, workshops and proceeds from her retail and studio storefront in Huntersville. Their goal next year, says Bill, is the $1 million mark.

So really, who knew?

"That is the challenge," he says. "Internationally, everyone knows her. But here in our own back yard, we struggle."

And when he says "back yard," he's not kidding.

Donna Downey Studios, nestled in the corner of a decades-old single story building it shares with a tattoo parlor and a small church, sits near the corner of Mt. Holly-Huntersville Road and Old Statesville Road, a little less than two miles north of the Downeys' home in the Plum Creek neighborhood.

That's where the business of Donna Downey Studios began — in the couple's garage about eight years ago.

But that wasn't the beginning of Donna Downey, the artist. That started with a natural aptitude for art coupled with a passing interest in the red-hot scrapbooking craze of the time, more than a decade ago.

"I was a fifth grade teacher in my former life," Donna says, "and I always had the best bulletin boards, the best project ideas. It was something I was already doing and I found out, 'Oh, look, there's an art form to this. It's called scrapbooking."

Running with scissors

From there, she was off and running.

Soon, she became an editor and columnist for Simple Scrapbooks magazine, and under her publisher's imprint, she authored five books covering topics such as scrapbooking with fabric to photo décor.

It wasn't long, however, before her creative interests extended beyond the confines of a scrapbook to the broader brushstrokes of mixed media, the art world in which she now plies her talents.

For her, Donna says the transition — as both a businesswoman and artist — was a natural evolution.

"I was always that kind of person that could be painting one day, sewing my own clothes the next day, knitting the next," she says. "So I've always been that person that kind of jumps around but also kind of blends things together easily."

With inherent artistic talent already in tow, Donna ultimately ventured into the world of art instruction with the creation of her "Inspired" workshops — a massive undertaking she began about four years ago.

Held in Concord, the events would annually attract about 300 women for the workshop, where Donna would pull together artists of every genre imaginable to work closely with the group across four days, introducing them to all manner of media.

Now with her own studio and teaching space, she will offer her Inspired workshops to a more manageably sized group of about 20 women, keeping the instruction and experience more intimate for the budding artist learning to explore her own sense of creativity.

"In my heart, I'm a teacher first," Donna says about her desire to nurture art in others. "So I admit I get some kind of cheap thrill when someone's eyes light up and they get it."

And what they'll get, in addition to the one-on-one, hands-on touch of an internationally acclaimed artist, is a little bit of local flavor as well.

Donna says in addition to partnering with local hotels (more than half her classes are made up of women from outside the U.S.), limo services and restaurants such as Harvey's Bar & Grill in Huntersville's Vermillion neighborhood, attendees will get a little taste of home cooking, too. Her "Italian mother from Brooklyn," as Donna describes her (who also lives nearby), will cater some of the meals during the four-day event. The ones scheduled for February and March 2012 are already sold out.

The next Martha?

With product lines in her name and legions of devoted crafters from around the world following her online blogs and purchasing her video classes and supplies through her Web site, Donna says she still has designs on even bigger plans for the future.

"I want to be the next Martha Stewart," she says. "I want to be in the fabric industry, I want to be in Target with the Donna Downey stemware, I want to be everywhere."

She says for now, however, she wants to focus on becoming a known quantity on a smaller scale — right here in her home town.

She says she hopes her studio and accompanying classroom will become a comfortable community space, a place to hold not just mixed media classes but birthday parties or a fun girls' night out as well.

The Downeys have already held summer camp classes for children at the studio and hosted Girl Scouts working toward their badges.

"It can be almost anything you want it to be," she says, "but I'd really love it to be a kind of touchstone for the community."

Wanna get crafty?

Stop in to browse through Donna's work or sign up for a class. Donna Downey Studios is at 501 South Old Statesville Road in Huntersville. Store hours are Monday through Saturday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Call 704-948-4627 or visit www.donnadowney.com for more information.