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Sep. 20--CHAPEL HILL -- When Meredith Grey and her co-workers make their way to the maternity ward of Seattle Grace Hospital later this year, keep your eyes peeled for the painting of a blue puppy dog in the background.
"Grey's Anatomy," ABC's hit show chronicling the medical and romantic exploits of surgical interns, has commissioned seven children's paintings from Chapel Hill artists Lisa Wojnovich and Patsy Smith to decorate the show's set.
"Grey's Anatomy" begins its third season Thursday night. Smith and Wojnovich's work could appear on the walls of a delivery room or nursery in the season's eighth episode, depending on when the script takes the interns to that part of the hospital.
Wojnovich, 38, and Smith, 39 -- stay-at-home mothers with two children each -- started Litsy Designs 21 months ago as a way to pursue their dreams of painting.
Like many other mothers who start home businesses, the women mention fulfillment, rather than financial motives, when they talk about their reasons for starting the company.
"It's really nice to have created something that's our own," said Wojnovich, who spent four years at home before starting the business.
Now their fledgling venture could get a big boost.
Most companies would love the kind of free exposure that Litsy Designs could get on the popular TV show, said Gary Armstong, a marketing professor at the University of North Carolina's Kenan-Flagler Business School.
"These days there are companies who pay big sums of money to get exposure like that on a show like 'Grey's Anatomy.' "
Simply being associated with the show can be a plus, even for potential customers who might not watch the show or catch glimpses of the paintings in the background.
"They could put a spot up on their Web site, 'As featured on "Grey's Anatomy," ' and it might lend legitimacy to their Web site," Armstong said.
The idea for Litsy Designs came out of a mothers' group. Wojnovich was asked what she would want to do if she knew that she couldn't fail and money was no object.
"I said I'd be a famous artist," Wojnovich said.
Other mothers encouraged her to go for it, but she didn't want to go it alone. Wojnovich asked Smith, an acquaintance she had met in a neighborhood mothers' group a few years earlier, to be her partner.
Lesley Spencer Pyle, founder of Home-Based Working Moms, an association for working mothers, said there are two categories of mothers who run businesses from home: those who need income and those who want the fulfillment of work with the flexibility that isn't available in many jobs.
"It gives an additional outlet, so you're still kind of in the working world, but you set your own hours," Pyle said.
"It's real appealing to moms. Flexibility is the biggest draw for me, personally."
Neither Wojnovich nor Smith had any formal artistic training when they started their business in January 2005. Wojnovich had a master's in public health, and Smith received a bachelor's degree in economics. Both had long been interested in art.
Their business had been slowly growing through appearances at craft shows and traffic on their Web site when Smith received an e-mail message two weeks ago requesting art for "Grey's Anatomy."
"It's kind of surreal," Smith said. "It's kind of unimaginable."
Nicole Cramer, buyer for the "Grey's Anatomy" set decorator, said the show likes to purchase original artwork because it's often easier to acquire permission to use it. She said the show budgets about $1,000 per episode for artwork, including frames.
Cramer found Wojnovich and Smith's site (www.litsydesigns.com) through an Internet search for children's art. The site sells products such as dinosaur nameplates for $32, plus shipping, and personalized canvas hangings that cost more than $100.
Pyle said that the online marketplace can be an equalizer between small, home-based businesses and bigger companies.
"The Internet kind of gives everybody a level playing field, because if you have a professional Web site, people aren't going to necessarily know if you're working from home or if you're in a big downtown building," she said.
Smith and Wojnovich say they are each working about 40 hours a week to keep pace with increasing demand.
On Monday, they packed up Owen the monkey, Max the dinosaur, B.J. the giraffe and other brightly colored paintings and sent them to Los Angeles by two-day express. As a free thank you, they also threw in some of their wooden plaques, decorated with phrases such as "Baby Sleeping" and hung on bright ribbons.
"Who knows in whose hands it'll end up," Wojnovich said.
"I hear [that actor] Patrick Dempsey's wife is expecting," Smith said.
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Copyright (c) 2006, The News & Observer, Raleigh, N.C.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
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