Every other Thursday, I will be featuring a new artist here on the blog! To be clear, I’m using the word “artist(s)” to cover fine artists, photographers, musicians, crafters, fashion designers, anyone who creates something.
Today’s feature is Becky Striepe!
- To start, please tell us a bit about yourself. What’s your story?
I’ve always been into crafting in one way or another. My mom is a preschool teacher, so I grew up on fun art projects. My business name is sort of a nod to my crafty roots…I loved making those glitter paintings. You know the ones? Where you draw with white glue and dump a whole bunch of giltter on there? It just seemed magical to me. Four or five years ago, a couple of girlfriends taught me how to make jewelry, and I did that for a while, but it didn’t really feel like the best fit. Finally, I got someone to teach me how to use a sewing machine, and I was in love! There is so much you can do with fabric! I loved how easy it was to turn old things new again….I could transform a pillowcase into a purse! Or a tablecloth into a cuff! It was magic all over again.
Lately, I’ve been focusing on making Lunch Kits. I love how popular they seem to be getting! I make a bag and 5 napkins, and the kit comes with a stainless steel lunchbox and a pair of utensils. Packing a lunch can be so wasteful, and it just doesn’t have to be! My dream is that these kits inspire folks to eat better and waste less. I love seeing someone pick up a kit and get really excited about packing their lunch. I’m pretty passionate about food. When I’m not crafting, there’s a good chance I’m in the kitchen.
- How long have you been creating?
I guess since I was a little kid. I’ve been doing stuff as Glue&Glitter for a few years now. Three? Four, maybe?
- What inspires you?
So many things! A lot of inspiration comes from what I find when I’m hunting for fabric. Everything I make is from fabric remnants, vintage finds and things I take apart from the thrift store. My current obsession is playing around on Colour Lovers (www.colourlovers.com). You can make palettes of your own and mess around with patterns and whatnot. It’s fun to play with color combinations there and then try to find things in that vein when I go hunting. I love the challenge of finding something that just needs a little love to become something beautiful.
- Please describe your creative process (the how, the when, materials, etc.).
I have a book of sketches with measurements and whatnot on them…I guess you could call them “patterns,” but they’re way more crude than that! I tend to doodle on scrap pieces of paper, sketching ideas that come when I’m out and about. Some ideas are on the backs of napkins or paper I fish out of the recycle bin at my dayjob. So those things come home in my pocket, and if I try them and they work, I make a sketch in the special notebook. At that point, I start with an idea for a color or a theme and rummage through my fabric stash for something that works.It just sort of goes from there!
- What’s your biggest artistic disaster to date? How did it help you progress?
Man, I can’t think of a real disaster I’ve had! There have definitely been projects that turned out totally different from how I wanted. A lot of the time, they turn out even better than I’d planned! It’s kind of spooky. If they don’t turn out as well as I’d hoped, it means I get to keep it. Everybody wins!
- What’s your favourite piece that you’ve done?
Oh man, that’s tough! Is it really cheesy to say I love them all? It probably is. I guess…my favorite pieces are ones that are sentimental. I made a couple of lunch kits with kitty cats appliqued onto them, and the model was a picture of one of my own kitties, Agnes. It makes that design really close to my heart.
- What’s the best advice you were given when starting out?
Don’t Panic! It’s so easy, especially when getting ready for a big craft fair, to freak out. You’ll never feel like you have enough stuff, at least I never do. I used to get really worked up about it. Then, someone asked, “What’s the worst thing that happens? You sell out?” They were so right! This is supposed to be fun, so have fun!
- Do you have any advice to give others?
You get back what you put out there! Funny you should ask this…a galpal and I were just talking about this yesterday! It feels sort of like I’ve fallen into a lot of things…from press to amazing local contacts. I think that sort of make sense. I’m kind of drawn to smart, kind, creative people. Having that sort of support system is totally priceless. If it weren’t for my amazing friends and family, I’d be a complete mess.
- What’s coming up for you; any big plans artistically?
Right now, I’m working on growing SuperCute! (www.wearesupercute.com), this crafty collective that I’m a part of. The three of us, Liz, Lori and I, are really focusing on making our businesses sustainable. We’ve started a blog to document our adventures! There is so much waste associated with crafting, and we really feel like it doesn’t have to be that way. We are trying to incorporate more and more recycled and revamped materials in our work and working together, too! A good example, I guess, is that I save all my scraps….bits of thread, teeny pieces of fabric….and Lori uses them in her stuffies in place of polyfill. It seems like a small thing, but it totally isn’t! It keeps all that trash out of the bin and saves Lori from having to buy as much polyfill, which is basically fluffy plastic, isn’t it? I love the feeling of being part of something that’s bigger than myself.
- Recommend 3-5 artists the rest of the world should know about.
Lorigami (www.lorigami.com)
Lizerati (www.lizerati.com)
Scurvy Dog Photography (www.scurvydog.biz)
Patina (www.ilovepatina.com)
a. bardis (www.abardis.com)
- Where can people find your work?
I have an Etsy shop (glueandglitter.etsy.com) with all sorts of goodies, from Lunch Kits to cuffs and collages. You can also find my Lunch Kits at Cosmo’s Vegan Shoppe (www.cosmosveganshoppe.com). Cosmo’s is totally awesome. They have a storefront here in Atlanta and an online shop. There are tons of vegan treats there…I tend to spend about as much as I make there! In Atlanta, I’ve got Lunch Kits at Youngblood Gallery (www.youngbloodgallery.com) and Wine Bags at Brix Wine Merchant (www.brixwinemerchant.com).
- Feel free to add anything else that I might have missed, and thank you very much for taking the time to do this interview!
Aw, anytime! This was totally fun!
Well, that was another installment of “… And I Dig It!” Please visit Becky’s site and check out her work! That’s what this feature is all about - getting people interested in art forms connected with people working and creating with art forms! And if YOU would like to be featured, don’t be shy about it! Feel free to comment here or contact me, and we’ll get you in a future feature!
