I am so thrilled to be a guest on the Where Woman Create blog.. can I just gush a moment and tell you all how wonderful I think Jo and Paige are? SIMPLY AMAZING! Amazing to be a part of such a wonderful place to celebrate creative women!
A little bit about me: I realized when at the age of 4 that I had a creative bug and wanted to explore it. I loved painting with my mom and aunt when I was only 5 years old and that love just continued to grow. After I got married and started having children ( I have 5 boys and 1 girl). I knew I wanted to explore that creative side of me once again. I loved to sew and create my own primitive dolls and stitchery's and I loved painting primitive girls, snowman and Santa's on wood and other surfaces ! I had found my creative side again! Soon I started taking my designs and patterns to local bazaars and selling my handmade items as well as the patterns for others to make them. That led to my first published book in 2002, called: A little bit of my Heart. My husband and I also opened an online store called Rustic Treasures and through both the Country Sampler and Country Markeplace magazines sold our patterns, book and stitchery's online.
About 2 years after we started Rustic Treasures I was introduced into papercrafting and was excited about the possibilities the products in that industry provided for an artist like me. I started participating in online craft forums and sharing my papercrafting projects online and was soon contacted by a girl by the name Melody Ross. You may recognize the name. she is creative partner with her sister Kathy Wilkins, of Brave Girls Club. She owned a business called Chatterbox that designed and manufactured papercrafting products. She invited me to bring my family and meet with her to talk about working with her on an upcoming book she wanted to publish called Welcome Home. Not long after the book was done, she offered me a full time as creative director, developing products, traveling and teaching papercrafting and helping her market her product in the creative industry. I was thrilled! Mel and I were instants friends and am so blessed that she is still one my closest and dearest friends today. I worked for her for 3 years before deciding that with an ever growing family, I needed to really be at home with them. I also missed working with my husband and knew it was the right things to do for me and my family. In 2006 I left Chatterbox and took an "at home" job with Better Homes and Gardens Scrapbooks etc magazine as a contributing editor and also helped them develop their first event for online classes! I was able to stay at home full time and take care of my young family. I also started traveling and teaching workshops on how to create my papercrafting projects and was blessed to be able to travel through the United States and to such places as Brazil, Canada, and even South Africa.
In 2007 I also started my own business Scarlet Lime, and online shop, where I offered monthly kits each month full of papercrafting goodies for all types of artist. Six months after I started my small company, my husband and I realized it was turning into something I couldn't handle on my own. He own a construction company.. so together we decided stop both of our other jobs and to focus solely on the Scarlet Lime shop and make that our only job. Over the last 4 years our website has grown by leaps and bounds and we have been so blessed to be able to work together and provide creative products and projects for artist and crafters alike. In 2009, I started getting that creative itch again and fell in love with making jewelry out of found objects and fun beads and charms! I spent months researching online to find unique beads and charms from other countries and soon opened up our second online shop, called Scarlet Lime BeadArt, where we offer pre-designed Jewelry kits as well as jewelry and charm supplies both retail and wholesale. We were blessed to see this shop also grow and found the need to recently expand and offer more than just jewelry kits. In March we will be debuting a re-launch and brand new design of the Scarlet Lime BeadArt site carrying not only jewelry kits but fun vintage charms and unique beads.
Even though I had two online store and was able to create in both the papercrafting industry and jewelry industry…. I really missed painting and my mixed media art. I had grown two wonderful business over the last 5 years but lost myself as an artist in the process. So in October of last year, I decided to start blogging again and creating art and sharing that art on my blog. I wanted to share with my papercrafting customers that there is a whole other creative world out there in the art and mixed media industry where papercrafting products can be used! I love painting on pretty much any type of medium but my true love is painting on canvases. I love painting whimsical houses and birds and scenes, but also love painting "she Art" girls that depict how I want to live my life. I started offering free basic tutorials on my blog on how to create these canvases using papercrafting supplies but soon I had other creative women emailing me asking me to teach them in depth how to create my "she Art' girls (as I call them). So in January of this year I launched registration on my blog, for my 3 week e-course, The She Art Workshop. This is an online class that starts February 28th and is a 3 week course that goes really in depth on how I create my backgrounds, textures and my She Art Girls on canvas and other surfaces. I am SO thrilled about this class and the opportunity to be teaching again and sharing my art! In January we also re-designed our Scarlet Lime Website and re-launched it as a not only a papercrafting supply website but also a place to find fun mixed media art products , including vintage finds, canvases, my favorites inks, rubons and paints. I have felt so blessed that I have been able to start creating again and sharing that creative side with other creative women. I have found such a huge support group on my blog and adore my readers! I am truly blessed.
As my way of saying HELLO and THANK YOU!!.. to you all, I am giving away here on The Where woman Create Blog: 3 spots into my upcoming online course: The She Art Workshop. Plus a $35.00 gift certificate to each winner, to my online shop: Scarlet Lime, so the lucky winners can pick out some fun products to use for the class!
To learn more about me, my mixed media art, tutorials or my workshop, please visit my blog here:
www.christytomlinson.typepad.com
or check this direct link to my She Art Workshop here:
http://christytomlinson.typepad.com/christytomlinson/workshops.html
To visit our mixed media/papercrafting shop Scarlet Lime or our BeadArt site you can visit us here:
www.scarletilme.com (papercrafting and mixed media kits)
or
www.scarletlimebeadart.com (charm, bead and jewelry kits)
Thanks for letting me share a little bit about myself and my love of art! I am excited to connect with new creative women and to call you all friends! I Hope you all have a truly FABULOUS day!
Thank you Christy!
Beautiful post … Nice to meet you!
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~HAVE A FABULOUS WEEKEND~
