Do you ever have these moments when you look back and realise a lot has changed? I had one this summer, sitting in the studio writing calligraphy place cards for the participants of one of my workshops. My dog Jessie was lying by my feet and at the desk next to me my friend Dawnie was crafting her awesome earrings. Some lovely tunes were filling the studio, the sun was peeking through the blinds and we were planning on a stand up paddling session on the Amstel river later. In that moment I felt perfectly happy with the way my life looked, and I realised how much had changed in just a few short years.
Two years ago things were a lot different. I would rush to the office every morning to sit behind my computer at a large media agency for 8, more often 10 or 12, long hours every day. My days were filled with excel sheets, client calls and meetings that didn’t really interest me. Life was ok, but somehow something was missing. I felt like this wasn’t really me.
So I started to investigate what really lights me up in life. And of course the answer was creativity, it had always been creativity. From a young age I was always drawing, writing, painting and crafting. My mum, sister and I would sit around the kitchen table crafting things, and on Saturday mornings my sister and I would sell our creations in front of the butchers shop across the road, from a market stall that my dad had built himself.
How had I let myself loose that creative joy in life, why did I end up behind that computer wishing my days away? I remember clearly the moment I decided that this was enough, sitting in a meeting room in London listening to some client’s sales figures that didn’t really interest me. I promised myself at that moment that within a year I would leave the corporate world to fill my days with creativity.
I started drawing again and I taught myself calligraphy, watching every YouTube video I could find and ordering all the supplies I could get my hands on. Friends were getting married or having their first baby, so I offered to design birth announcements and wedding invitations for them. I made myself a website, started uploading my work to Instagram and slowly but surely things began to roll. In the spring of 2018 I hosted my first workshop for Dawnie and some of her friends, and in the summer of that year I left my media career for a part time job at a woodworking shop that would be easier to combine with my little creative biz.
Fast forward 2 years and we moved into the brightest, most amazing studio space, I designed birth announcements for lots of adorable babies, got to teach the art of calligraphy to so many wonderful people and host workshops by other creatives at The Craft Canteen. How life has changed from rushing into that office every morning! I never could have dreamed what life would look like now that moment I decided to bring creativity and crafts back into my life. But I knew that I had to start somewhere, that I had to do something to find that spark again. And I hope I can help you find that spark too. I hope that I can share with you the joy of just creating something and let you experience that amazing feeling of getting lost in the moment and realising what you can create with just your own hands and some good supplies. So sign up to my mailing list to stay informed about new in-person workshops, once I can plan them again, and the upcoming online course that I’m working on right now! Do it now to get a 10% discount code to use once the course opens! Because sometimes you just have to start somewhere.
