By LEAH WEATHERSBY

I never thought I'd see the day when it was possible to be under-dressed for Ballard, but it's here. Once the neighborhood was strictly blue collar, but it seems like overnight Ballard Avenue has become a place for shoppers who don't mind spending a little extra on an unusual boutique item.

One shop that exemplifies this change is Souvenir - more gallery than everyday store - where consumers who love the exquisite can browse for jewelry, found objects and most prominently, greeting cards. For between $6 and $12, customers can take home a Curtis Steiner print that just happens to carry a message such as "Thank you" or "Happy Birthday." Steiner, who grew up in Mountlake Terrace, has been painting and drawing since he was 4 years old. He had no formal training but was a strong adherent to the old adage, practice makes perfect.

"When I was very young I was constantly, constantly drawing. I was really a passionate realist. That develops a certain skill that allows you to do basically everything," said Steiner.

At age 16, Steiner moved to Vancouver, British Columbia. While, once again, he had no formal training as a designer, his experience landscaping and doing interior design for his own home helped get him other jobs in those fields. He stayed in Vancouver for 10 years, eventually leaving to travel in Japan and Southeast Asia, and then settle in New York for a few months where he worked as a fabric designer. While Steiner says he loved the city, he found the work environment difficult.

"People were very competitive," Steiner explained. "There's not a lot of gentility."

Steiner returned to Seattle in the early 1990s, resuming his career as a garden and interior designer. He also picked up work arranging product displays for local boutiques. In 1996 Better Homes & Gardens took notice of the landscaping he did at a house he rented in Fremont and published an article about it in Better Homes & Gardens' Do It Yourself magazine. Steiner gave the magazine a sketch of his drawing and that led to other illustration jobs for the magazine.

It seems that Steiner's range of experience in different fields has paid off. In 1999, after having manufactured his line of cards for several years, Steiner decided to open his own retail space. At the time he was considering renting a loft at ActivSpace, a building in Fremont where artists can rent studio spaces, and headed over to Hattie's Hat restaurant/bar in Ballard to have a drink and mull it over. After a fortuitous meeting with another Ballard shopkeeper, Steiner was convinced that Ballard Avenue with its historic architecture and tree-lined thoroughfare was a good place to open a store. When a spot opened at 5325 Ballard Ave NW he took it. Profits from his previous year, during which he sold approximately 40,000 handmade greeting cards to various retailers including Neiman Marcus and Papyrus allowed him to start the business.

Not surprisingly, Steiner does have some help manufacturing his cards these days with the less-skilled tasks such as paper tearing and gluing.

Steiner, like many artists, seems to possess a great attention to detail. One of his card designs feature his color illustrations, mounted so that they are raised above the surface of the card itself, and surrounded in gold accents. The "objects" he offers for sale include Chinese tobacco boxes made with tanned shark skin and souvenir sea shell purses which were offered for sale at all kinds of American tourist destinations around the turn of the century.

Steiner said that customers will often walk into his shop and exclaim "oh well, somebody had too much time on their hands!" While he said the prices of his cards do discourage some, especially the older crowd, many visitors also have the opposite reaction.

"Some people come in and want one of everything," Steiner said. "They view it as cheap art." b