My story

the road not taken

I have tinkered with ‘making stuff’ my whole life but, until recently, I never entertained the idea of turning my passion for arts & crafts into more than a hobby.

Many moons ago I grew sick and tired of working a stressful corporate job and, still holding onto the notion that I needed a ‘real job’, decided to try my hand at freelancing. Which was fine, for a while, but I became disillusioned with that as well — it seemed to be just another form of ‘working for the man’ rather than actually working for myself.

So — since I have always delighted in the process of designing and creating — I made up my mind to follow my personal ‘road not taken’, and am hoping it will make all the difference!

my background

I was born in a small country town and grew up on a sheep farm in the Northern Tablelands of NSW. Mum was a professional potter — so I had an early introduction to the wonderfully chaotic world of arts & crafts.

At school, ‘art’ was never promoted as a career path. Straight out of high school I headed off to uni for a double-major in physics. Mind you, I continued to experiment with art & craft — especially when I was procrastinating about study ;-)

Later, with an honours degree in astrophysics, according to potential employers I was either too qualified (e.g. “too intelligent for a lab assistant”) or not qualified enough (e.g. “sorry, you need to hold a PhD for this position”).

During the years spent chasing my ‘ideal career’, I moved back to Northern NSW and, in my spare time, attended local TAFE classes in ‘Fine Arts’ and ‘Design Methods and Principles’. This adventure led me to the Queensland College of Art to study a Diploma of Art focusing on commercial art. This became my gateway to a graphic design position with the Queensland Government.

Just four years after the World Wide Web was first introduced to the public — my role as a graphic designer expanded to include the creation of websites. I spent countless hours teaching myself web design, PHP and database design. I later obtained a Graduate Diploma in IT and became systems administrator / senior analyst for the Web Development Team.

I had picked up some random freelance jobs in my spare time and, after a while, this freelancing business started to grow. But … I was spending less and less time on my personal interests.

Then an epic ‘tree-change’ unfolded — I moved back to the country (supposedly a temporary move, to my parents' beautiful property on the Sunshine Coast Hinterland) and gave birth to my amazing son! I continued to freelance remotely, but most of my time was spent being a full-time mum.

When he was about 5, my son was diagnosed as ‘high functioning autistic’ (a topic worthy of a blog post or two, stay tuned). I became heavily involved with the local school community, joined the P&C association and worked part-time as a teacher aide.

Over the next couple of years, my son’s anxiety worsened to the point where he was no longer coping with the school environment. I decided to educate him from home — and he hasn’t looked back since.

Shortly after, I stopped freelancing to move on with the next stage of my life: focusing on my arts & crafts.

a new beginning

So, there I was: a single mum living in a small detached bungalow, helping my parents daily, home-schooling my remarkably ausome 11-yr-old and attempting to save $s to build my soon-to-be teen his own bedroom!

Arts & crafts became my escape — my ‘me time’ — in between everything else.

I started attending local markets, on the weekends, and had some success selling my wire-wrapped jewellery. 

Since then we have added an extension to our bungalow — my son now has his own personal space — and I have a ‘workshop’ where I spend a lot of time experimenting with a variety of arts and crafts.

Some of my favourite techniques and mediums include crochet, coloured pencils, timber, beads, found items, resin, copper wire, watercolours, fabric, thread, photography and 3D printing (to name a few).

next steps

I enjoyed the process of building this website. Currently listed are a bunch of items created by myself and other family members, including jewellery, fused glass pendants and bookmarks. 

I will continue adding my own completed work, including crochet, illustrations, needlework, mono-prints and mixed media items. I am also looking forward to all the new and fabulous things I can create and share with the world.

I have started writing some crochet patterns and sharing my ideas and knowledge — this is all very new and exciting — please keep an eye out for these.