When circumstances made it necessary, Boyd was able to earn an income with her pencil. Her pictures were exhibited and sold in New York City and Brooklyn, where she was an exhibitor in both of their Academies of Design. She won a number of medals and prizes in the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, in 1876, and in various State and county exhibitions. The wife and husband moved to San Francisco, California, in 1877, and she was professionally successful there also. Boyd wrote and drew for "The American Garden", New York, and for other periodicals, using the signature K. P. S. B.