Creative Courage course by Stephanie Levy

Stephanie Levy is an illustrator, artist, blogger, and mom to 2 beautiful girls living in Berlin who I've been able to connect with online over the last couple of years!  She has been offering an online course called 'Creative Courage' which is meant to inspire you on your creative journey in life!  The early-bird registration for her latest course is online here, where you will notice a new line-up of artists and makers that she'll be interviewing as part of the course.  I'm honoured to be included, alongside some of my favourite designers, makers and bloggers like Heather Moore, Arounna Khounnoraj, Victoria Smith and Alicia Paulson, just to name a few.  Along with these exclusive interviews, Stephanie will be generously sharing from her own wealth of experience, encouraging you on your own creative endeavors while connecting you to a broader creative community! It's an amazing opportunity to grow and pursue your own creative dreams- I know I'm looking forward to it!

Last week for the Kindred Show

It's the last week that our show at Kindred is up and available through bookhou shop in Toronto!  Please do stop by if you are in the neighbourhood- things have become a little more sparse then when we opened but it's still a beautiful show to see!

I was so pleased with how this show turned out- it felt like a real treat to be able to plan it with Krystal and Arounna- I look forward to more of these types of collaborations and special projects down the road.  I think as a full-time maker I can get bogged down with some of the daily grind stuff- the orders and the business side of things (taxes/paying bills etc.) and sometimes forget what an amazing opportunity I have within my work to reach out and connect in a larger way.  The meaningful side of my work reveals itself when things like this happen- when a show of friendship and mutual promotion as artists and makers encourages us to create in a way we might not have otherwise.  So for this, I'm so grateful!

As for the studio this week- I managed to get some flooring for the new space this last weekend at the flooring auction (me + 2 boys + flooring auction= a little craziness, but it happened!), so this week I'll be finishing up some work to get ready for the renos.  I'll post some before pics soon.

Bookhou at Circle Craft

I managed to sneak in a quick visit with Arounna from Bookhou at Circle Craft this last Saturday.   It was great to see a table full of her beautiful hand-screened linens as bags and tea towels!  I'm thrilled to be working on a show involving myself and Krystal Speck later in Spring of 2012 at Bookhou so it was good to briefly talk about the collaboration with Arounna before it all gets started in the new year. 

Arounna and her husband John have a really unique creative partnership that never ceases to amaze me- they work seemingly effortlessly between art and then the more production side of their craft, successfully running a brick & mortar shop with rotating shows and workshops, keeping a busy online store, a blog, an online magazine not to mention their 2 young children!  I try to convince myself that if I owned a store front building in the city with a studio at the back and our home upstairs that I'd be able to get as much done as Arounna and John do, but I'm not sure I could keep up if I tried.