Meet me, the creative.

Meet me, the creative. That’s my self-declared career (after navigating the early 20’s as a design graduate I followed the peaks and trouphs of trying to ‘make it’). 

I have done A LOT of interning (for free like any keen grad!), a LOT of soul searching, a short stint running a coffee shop startup - that’s a great story for another time - and along the way gathered a wealth of experience in the design world; in particular the interior world. 

From a young age I would offer my strong, often unwelcome opinions to my parents as they renovated a couple of houses we lived in. As a feisty 7 year-old, I would weigh in on the colour of the new sofa on order, the painfully 90’s curtains that needed replacing, and the shade of beige carpet they insisted on gracing our floors with. What I am so grateful for is that through all of that I was allowed to design and tell my story. 

My bedroom was my first project - I had my way with the pink and purple carpet options in Carpet right in 2004, opting for a groovy chick-inspired theme (if you know, you know) - imagine it… pink and purple walls, a tent bed from Argos and this short pile, speckled multi-coloured carpet. It really was something special back then and it was all mine. I was so proud of that little space. 

A few years later, we bought the house 3 doors down. This was a real fixer-upper and this time I was a preteen with a real ‘DIY’ attitude. You would either find me with a wallpaper steamer in hand, or rummaging through the garage of furniture that had been left behind to make my bedroom feel like me. There wasn’t loads of money for new shiny pieces, but I wasn’t interested in new; I was interested in the challenge. I would drag a dusty old wardrobe from the garage up the stairs… sand it, paint it, and repeat as the years went on and my style changed. 

I would spend hours in charity shops with my pocket money sourcing decorative pieces and imaging the day where I’d have a home for that beautiful old butchers' chopping board I’d just bought for £3 at 14 years-old and didn’t need until I was ‘grown up’ (it now lives pride of place on display in my city centre apartment and my husband simply cannot understand why we don’t actually use it).  

I went through a story telling phase when I was 17; where all the art projects I did in my A Levels were about objects in the home and what story they told - my subconscious was clearly screaming about that chopping board!!

University was wild. Instead of taking the clear interior design route, I wanted to take a more holistic route. I wanted to understand print, colour and process. In these years, I really came to appreciate what makes beautiful things beautiful. I learnt how colour converses with our environment to impact us, I learnt how we psychologically respond to spaces and became a little bit obsessed with how my work could evoke some kind of feeling… I was always chasing the story that came from said feeling - that was my niche!

I then graduated into the daunting abyss of opportunity. It was scary but we made it work. I took any opportunity that came my way. I was a naive design grad sliding into DM’S of designers I loved praying for a reply - it worked a couple of times too! I learnt a lot: how to design in a corporate setting; how to meet deadlines; customer demands; innovation; pace; personalities; and being at the bottom of the rather large pile. Coffee runs were my thing and pantone colour codes were my jam - I could tell you the hot new codes for that weeks trends by the end of Monday. I became a Pinterest wizz and learnt the kind of environment that I’d want to work in and felt I could serve best. I ended up working for a coastal interior design company, pulling schemes together from wall treatments to textiles - helping clients tell their stories and LOVED it. 

That was my lane: interactive, collaborative, tactile design. Sourcing unique pieces, getting excited over the finishing touches, and seeing the glee of clients walking into their transformed spaces.

After a big move to a new city, a slight reset on life and few more coffee shop jobs I found my way back to my niche. Story telling design.

So welcome to my story. I'd love you to get to know you; maybe we could tell a story together?