Crafty Ass Female

In this episode, A + K talk about scrapbooking as an amazing tool for personal growth since it causes you to be reflective, and how the craft of memory keeping blends the past, present, and future all at once. The girls discuss supplies and not treating them so preciously. Also, A + K make a point that choosing supplies is not the only choice you need to make for a project. Crafters don’t realize that choosing the approach is equally if not more important. How to extrapolate EASE and JOY in scrapbooking is what the girls are goaling to get across in the episode, and also suggest focusing on using all FIVE SENSES to pay attention to the little details of your life.

SUMMARY // Cathy Zielske (pronounced simply as Zil-ski) gives us the backstory of how she got to where she is today, from her job as an assistant editor for a magazine to having a baby and freelancing to her foray into scrapbooking and how she ‘got hooked’. Amanda + Kristin also talk with Cathy about finding your ‘thing’ and staying afloat in the creative industry by pivoting when needed and always evaluating when you need to make a tweak. Cathy also gives the girls the low-down about FIT: her online class all about documenting self-care. The class aims for its participants to to answer: Can you connect to what you need?

How is it that time of year again, crafty ass females?! It’s time to choose a guiding word for the upcoming new year based on some aspect of your existence you want to explore. We’ve had this awesome conversation last year & the year before, and it’s fun to see how A & K have grown! // Listen to Ali’s one little word® interview with us here.

We have gotten some listener requests for another PLANNER-THEMED episode, so here it is! A + K have done this before almost 100 episodes ago (!!!), but so much has changed since then…and PEOPLE, WE ARE ENTERING YEAR 2020! OMG! Let’s go!

Vanessa Oliver-Lloyd shares with Amanda & Kristin how she ended up in Shanghai, got back into art journaling with '“nothing books”, and finally embraced the word ‘artist’ while creating a second career as one out of necessity. The girls also discuss how women’s art has been seen as pastimes and perceived with some degree of condescension - as “just hobbies” and therefore without much value. Vanessa reveals how the medium & technique she chooses for her art is very intuitive. Her advice for when her inner critic is triggered or imposter syndrome flares up is LISTEN, ACKNOWLEDGE, and KEEP GOING.

In this episode, A + K talk about people pleasing. Why do we do it? How can we become more aware of it? How can we set up appropriate boundaries? The girls share their versions on this phenomenon, and discuss the answers to these questions.

Katy-Rose Bye shares with Amanda & Kristin about how she spent a good portion of her life trying to invent or reinvent herself, trying figure out her purpose. She feels you don’t have to take an eat pray love approach to reinvent yourself, and makes a great point that a LAPSE is not a RELAPSE. The girls also discuss negative bias and how we’re almost hard-wired to put more emphasis on negativity. Katy-Rose talks about prioritizing the positive in her life and redefining negativity like in the example of saying “resting” instead of “slacking”. Katy-Rose reveals that the brain works in habits, and the more we do something the more our brain will habitualize to it. She talks about stacking habits and adding a new activity you want to make a habit to a habit you already regularly complete.

Today on the podcast we are excited to bring you Anna Lovind - a writer and editor who believes in women’s creative freedom and the power of our voices and stories. Through her writing, courses and workshops she has guided thousands of creative women to go from dreaming to doing. She is the author of The Creative Doer – A Brave Woman’s Guide from Dreaming to Doing, and co-founder of Write Your Self, a teacher training for people who want to use writing as a tool for healing. Anna lives in the deep forests of Dalarna, Sweden, with her man, their two kids and a dog.

THE CRAFTY ASS FEMALE PODCAST IS NOW MADE UP OF 100 EPISODES! Amanda & Kristin are thrilled to bring you the 100th episode of the podcast, and whether you’ve been around for all 100 or just stumbled upon the show, we’re thrilled you’re here and we couldn’t thank you enough!

Alicia Michelle talks to Amanda & Kristin about how she got into planning with an Erin Condren Life Planner, what her first impression was of The Happy Planner®, and how she ended up embracing the discs! Alicia also discusses the inspiration & evolution of her sticker business on etsy and the process she goes through to ‘make stickers’.

Jennifer Perkins talks to Amanda & Kristin about how she went from making zines that she distributed locally to working for HGTV and being the brand ambassador for Treetopia! Jen also discusses how her taste-level is questionable most of the time, and even though her style skews very kitschy, she reveals that she in fact does carefully curate and choose what is displayed at any given time. The girls chat about why she started her podcast Creative Queso, the importance of connecting to like-minded people, and her fabulous in-person meet-and-greet mixed called Caftans & Queso!

Kelly Purkey starts off by talking about her backstory a bit, strolling down memory lane referencing the workshop she hosted where A & K met, and why she decided to pay the women on her design team. The girls chat about Kelly’s new products for December and how she always strives to create something new every year and create products for those documenters that don’t have photo-heavy holidays.

Caylee Grey starts off by explaining where her title ‘Fairy Art Mother’ came from, and tells A + K how Get Messy kind of “fell from the heavens” into her life and how she turned it into a business. In a world that focuses so much energy beautifully curated images and moments, Caylee makes ‘MESS’ a word to strive for and celebrate! Getting messy, says Caylee, is dancing naked in perfectionism’s face! The girls chat a bit about depression and Caylee shares the small steps she took to get out of it. Amanda talks about how breathing is sometimes all you have for the day, and that blends into a conversation about what a NonZero Day is.

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Elise Joy starts off by jumping right into her first book Big Dreams, Daily Joys and tells A + K how the idea for it came about. She also talks about a bit about her blog, and why Instagram is her main jam now. Elise goes into how she prioritizes her multiple business and creative ventures, and how she defines HAVING SUCCESS WITH HOBBIES. We also hear Elise talk about goal-setting in such a pragmatic way! PRE-ORDER BIG DREAMS, DAILY JOYS NOW !!!

Caytlyn Cole starts off by recounting her creative backstory to A + K and how she always knew she was going g to have a creative career. She also talks about how she got started in memory keeping & the creation, break from, evolution, and relaunch of Push Print Studio! YAY! Amanda gushes about how good Cay’s designs are, and feels like Push Print Studio is a digital print shop where each card is like the favorite card you’d pick out of a whole collection!

Rachel Gajardo starts off by explaining to A + K how she created her Instagram account to get a planner company’s attention. She also talks about her ‘tunnel vision’ in thinking there is only one right way to be a creative person, and forgetting that there are so many possibilities & models for living a creative life! She’s proof! Rachel’s answer the question ‘Why pop culture?’ and goes into detail about what we’re all dying to know about: (1) where does she get all her stickers and (2) her process from choosing a theme to the sticker hunt to how far in advance she plans.

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When she isn't painting on rocks or wrangling her tiny humans, Alisha Joy likes to write about some pretty amazing and uncomfortable topics: shame, belonging, self-love, vulnerability, grief, jealousy (you know, the fun stuff!) But the thing that really gets her fired up is happiness: how to create it, where to find it, and why we sometimes feel it's out of our reach. (Don't worry, it's NEVER out of our reach. Like, never ever.)

The Crafty Ass Females take some time before some big interviews to talk about all the ways we want to hear from you and find out more about you. Make sure to be a part of our Patreon community and let us know more about yourself, your crafts, your femininity and even your ass.