An Introduction
A bit about me, my creative journey and why I’m here, pushing the limits of my comfort, writing on Substack.
My creative journey
Let me start with a little about myself, if I had to describe myself in one word, it would be a MAKER.
As well as being an avid maker of things, I am also a mother of two, craft book author, workshop facilitator, community group organiser, homeschooling parent, aspiring artist, life long learner and chief mess maker over at my creative business MINI MAD THINGS.
I have a Bachelor of Arts in Jewellery Design and a Masters in Textiles.
My creative journey began as a child. I hammered nails and built crazy contraptions in my Dad’s wood shed, I learnt to sew with my Mum and sold scrunchies to my friends at school.
Moving on from the scrunchies, my most recent creative venture, MINI MAD THINGS, began in 2018 shortly after the birth of my daughter. Previously, I had been working as a jewellery designer in the fashion industry for 15 years, designing and making high-end costume jewellery. While I loved the creativity of my work, I had grown disillusioned with the ethics of the fashion industry and the vapid influencers that had grown to dominate fashion marketing. I was looking for something new.
So, following my instincts, I launched into the world of children’s creativity; manufacturing craft kits, running workshops and retailing art supplies and beautiful books. I learnt alongside my children as they grew, taking note of what sparked their creativity. Sharing the crafts we made together, I built a large Instagram following of 145k and a small business I could run from home whilst caring for my family.
When sharing my creative ideas and family life on social media, I have always tried to be honest, presenting the successes along with the failures and the mess left behind. I have aimed to be an antidote to the perfectly presented crafts, play, and family life shared by so many (usually whilst wearing white linen and running barefoot in meadows). We are imperfect and my house is often covered in paint. However, in recent months I have been taking a long, hard look at myself and the image of family life I present, even with all the creative mess. I worry that I too am complicit in sharing an image of family life that could be seen as some sort of ideal. And in sharing this image of our life, am I saying that our way of being is superior to others? You know those Instagram accounts, the ones saying spend 1000 hours outside all your parenting problems will be solved (check out this article by Virginia Sole-Smith unpacking the conservative Christian ideology embedded in 1000 Hours Outside), buy all these beautiful (expensive) wooden toys and your children will be smarter, or use this homeschool curriculum and suddenly all your children will sit harmoniously around a picturesque table together. I don’t want to be the craft version of that.
Looking deeper, as a white woman, I feel I need to be aware of the content I am putting out into the world, and question myself. Am I complicit in sharing an image of whiteness as an ideal? By sharing our life on a social media platform, am I saying that this is how family life should look for everyone? I don’t want to be another white woman with a platform professing to have some greater knowledge about how to raise children. I don’t. I recognise that my family life is just one of a multitude of ways of being, not an ideal.
Am I overthinking thing? After all it’s only craft. I feel that anyone who shares images and writing on the internet, particularly if you have a large following, has the responsibility to think about the effect those words and images have on others, as you would a conversation with any friend, colleague or even a stranger in real life. I think it matters.
Along with questioning the image I am portraying, I am also growing tired of short form media. It doesn’t value the effort I put into the ideas shared. I spend hours creating a craft project and it disappears into the bottomless void that is Instagram. It’s never enough, the algorithm constantly demanding more, and in the process leaching away my joy for creativity. This rapid and never ending way of sharing and consuming ideas is both a cause and a symptom of the capitalist world we live in; a world that I would like to divest from. I am ever grateful for those people who have followed along with my creative journey on Instagram but now I’m craving longer conversations and a deeper exploration of ideas.
These thoughts questioning the image I am portraying, and the negative effect on my creative passion due to constantly sharing on social media, have led me on a path to make some changes. Changes to the type of content I share and to where I choose to focus my time. This has brought me here, to Substack, where I’m hoping to delve deeper into topics around creativity, community building, parenting, education, and sustainability, along with sharing more in depth family art project ideas. I hope those of you who have followed our creative journey for so long will consider joining me here!
Our approach to creativity
Our approach to making art together is messy and flawed. (As is our family life.) It’s not about creating a perfect replica of a Pinterest craft project or sometimes even finishing a project. It, for me, has always been about the process. Learning through making, trying and often failing but trying again. It’s in this messy process that the spark of creativity and invention lives. Often the activities we embark on are a complete failure or sometimes the simplest art supplies can yield the most beautiful results. Creativity at home doesn’t have to be expensive or time consuming, when my daughter slips me a simple note with a drawing of us together, this means more to me than any elaborate artwork could.
Creativity is my passion, your passion might be sports or music or movies, anything really. Art is what I love and what I choose to share with the world. This doesn’t mean my passion is better or more important than yours. If you do love arty stuff or want ideas for how to bring more creativity into your home, that’s where I come in. I have SO MANY ideas share.
Thank you for joining me on this journey of creativity and exploration. Although I am first and foremost am a maker, not a writer, one of my most firmly held values is that of being a life-long learner. I have always challenged myself to learn new things; craft techniques, web design, cooking techniques and more. Now I’m feeling drawn to, what for me, is a big challenge, the written word. (Read more about why I feel I’m not a writer here.)
Like our art, through this process of writing and sharing, I hope to learn. I am willing to put myself in that uncomfortable space to grow.