IF making Bermuda-flavoured greeting cards is a profitable venture for Sue Wakefield Gibbons, her rewards are certainly not financial.

"I don't get rich by any means," said Ms Gibbons, "but I get a lot of joy out of it."

Since she returned to the island three years ago, Ms Gibbons has turned what began as an experiment into a virtual cottage industry. Her hand-made cards (available at All Wrapped Up in Hamilton) feature photographs of the sub-tropical scenery of her native isle and also the quaint architecture of the old Bermuda.

Yet Ms Gibbons soon learned that her artistic interests and her business interests would inevitably diverge. Indeed the pictures she most enjoys taking are in fact the least marketable.

"I love pictures of trees that are unusual, but those are not the things that sell," she said. "A lot of times I do pictures that I love, but they're not your typical South Shore view. I have to be mindful when I take pictures of what will sell."

The Bermudian is, by day, a psychotherapist. She's also a multiple-sclerosis patient.

"When, in 1999, I was diagnosed I went back to university. It was then that I bought my first camera," recalls Ms Gibbons. "When I got behind it I forgot about pain, or anything else that was happening in my life."

After buying her first camera, Ms Gibbons not only discovered a natural talent but a treatment no doctor would ever prescribe.

"When I use my camera I sort of go into another realm. What I'm feeling sort of becomes secondary; it's not there any more really. Taking pictures allows me to escape."

The pain has left her now, but the passion for her trade has not. In fact, she even incorporates it into her regular job.

"I'm also an expressive arts therapist, I believe art and photography are very useful in helping people to heal," she said.

But the notion of selling her work never occurred to Ms Gibbons until one day during a walk through Cambridge, Massachusetts where she studied.

"I went into all the little gift shops and saw cards with pictures of the area. I realised I had a trunk full of photos just like them that I didn't know what to do with. So I began to do it locally."

Ms Gibbons says she is both humbled and very surprised whenever someone buys a card of hers. But what she admits to be a lack of self-confidence is perhaps not altogether warranted. Her line of cards has amassed what is, by all accounts, a considerably loyal following.

"People will go into the store and say, 'Has she made any new cards yet?'" she laughed. "They'll ask me the same question. So I definitely feel the pressure sometimes."

l Ms Gibbons' current selection of Bermuda Christmas cards are available at All Wrapped Up in the Washington Mall.