Keepin' It Real

In honor of our brand new fully refurbished website going live, I thought I would answer a question I get asked pretty often:

"What is your creative process?"

Whether I am applying for a show, meeting potential wholesale customers, or talking to bloggers/writers, this question will inevitably come up.

You know who doesn't ask that question? Other makers. You know why? Because we all know a bullshit answer from a mile away and it's really hard to deliver or receive that much crap with a straight face. It's not that we want to lie, per se; it's that we feelcompelled to answer with said bull-poopie or risk looking like a complete lunatic.

At some point (and I blame Pinterest™) it became expected for our studios to look clean, organized, filled with white light, and adorable decor.  It became normal for the makers process to follow a clean, straight line that keeps up the illusion that makers live inside a beautiful world of fairy lights, espresso drinks, and deep personal satisfaction with who they are, and how and what they make.

Well this is my blog on my website, so I am going to keep it real. You might want to sit down

At the end of the day, we accomplish our goals. The work is done, packaged up, and on its way to its forever home. The "process" of getting there in the real world, at least most of the time, is not that pretty.

My hands are burnt, cut up, and there's resin on the inside of my left ring finger that simply won't come off. I'm not even sure how it got there.

When I look around my studio, it looks like a bomb went off—if the bomb had saws, metal, beads, paper, resin, solder, wire, more beads, pliers, and about 382 more crafty things.

I have creativity ADD. Medical Fact. I would love to put 100% of my focus on the task at hand 100% of the time but that just isn't in my DNA. Sorry (not sorry).

So my creative process looks like the bottom row in the picture above. There is no way in hell my studio photos will be pinned to anyone's board anytime soon. And that's okay. What you will get from me is honest-to-goodness made-by-me lovelies that most of time, I feel super duper proud of making and how I made it. Even with the crying.