Childhood talent turns into career for Cary mom

A teacher noticed Jeanine Romeo's artistic talents when she was in grade school.

Her parents sent her to private art lessons and Romeo eventually studied art in college. For more than a decade, she worked as a textile designer, hand painting designs for high-end apparel companies in New York. She also freelanced for clients such as Disney, Warner Bros. and Nickelodeon, putting cartoon characters on sleepwear and other pieces.

But after her two children came along - a son, now 15, and a daughter, now 12 - she tired of the long commute to Manhattan and crazy schedule. She left her job and launched her own mural business.

Art, she tells me, "always has been a part of my life."