Inspiration

For me, this all started with inspiration. My husband and I were in college, living in our first apartment, and had a one year old daughter who I stayed home with. Our home was beige. The walls were beige. The carpet was beige. The air was beige. As a creative, I am highly motivated (or unmotivated) by my environment. Dealing with postpartum depression and my biggest life change yet, I couldn’t help but look around at my beige space and feel the exact same. Who was I again? I surely didn’t feel like an artist. I felt like my old sofa, which was (as you guessed) beige.

The first thing I did was rip off the skirt of that old couch. I noticed it had been attached with staples and thought, “Well, I could do that.” I went on Amazon and used my points to buy a manual stapler. Once it arrived in my lock box across the parking lot, I strapped my tot into her car seat and off to the Hobby Lobby we went. I snagged the most colorful patterned fabric I could find in the clearance remnant section and headed home with the motivation and excitement that had left me many months prior.

I covered my first chair. The seat pad to an antique Renaissance Revival chair I found for $7 at one of the side of the road antique stores I had dragged my husband to in our first couple months of marriage. That was it. I was hooked. Our home was less sad, and I felt less sad.

The early 2010’s are known as being the Pinterest DIY era, and I surely lived up to the stereotype. Shabby chic? Chippy paint? Farmhouse? I’ve Pinterest failed at it all! But every dumb and ugly project made me a little less beige. And every time I gained a new skill, I was a little more “me”.

Now, formally trained and owning my own upholstery business, my why continues to be inspiration. Maybe beige is your thing, it doesn’t have to be sad. I am in this for what makes you feel “you”. Your space isn’t just a reflection of your tastes, it is the environment that houses your motivation. And, darn it, you deserve to look around and feel color, pattern, and movement. So shoot me an email, or better yet, rip the skirt off your sad sofa and be inspired to look at life a bit differently.

-Leah

Addicted to Fast

Ancient texts talk of an “Eden”. A place uncorrupted, an ecosystem operating in total balance within itself. Where creativity and work are intertwined and purpose doesn’t need to be found, it just is. Here, life moves slow because it can. Fruit has space to ripen by the sun. Grass has freedom to reach its height. And humans have a chance to grow in destiny, not just age.

As the story moves forward, these texts talk about a “fall” of humankind. As a result, this Eden becomes hard to manage. Thorns grow and choke out crops, the ground becomes infertile, and humans experience pain and discontentment. Ultimately, it is written that everything on the Earth began to die.

Imagine a world where everything was allowed the time and space to grow up into something authentic, and good. Where every human hand that created was respected and compensated for their craft. Imagine, everything you owned was a piece of art. Things that would last you your lifetime and beyond. Things that brought purpose and meaning, because of the human hands that made them. An ecosystem of artists operating in total balance within itself. Where creativity and work are intertwined and purpose doesn’t need to be found in “stuff”, it just is.

The mastering of “fast” is our modern day fall. The fall of creativity. The fall of quality. The fall of sustainability. The fall of relationship and community. The fall of our humanity as it pertains to consumption. Think about it. Instead of asking our neighbors for a cup of sugar, we Instacart. Instead of buying a painting from a local artist, we buy printed AI generated pictures on cheap plastic canvas. We buy home goods and clothing that were made by the hands of those oppressed and enslaved while billionaires profit from their labor. We buy things that break, to rebuy things that break, to rebuy things that break. We fill the Earth with our wasted efforts to receive the things we want without giving anything in return. We are addicted to fast. And we are always unsatisfied. We consume copious amounts of counterfeit whilst forever craving what is real. Fall.

We can’t go back to before it happened. We can’t change the disastrous damage we have done. But we can move forward imperfectly to begin to cultivate, in our own lives and community, a culture of slow.

Source from real people. Build relationship with artisans. Create, and empower creation. Build your life around purpose. Deal with your addiction. Be a part of the restoration.