Flickr: LeiLiLALoo

Who am i?
I am a mother a wife and a creator, at 37 years old i am still as much addicted to making stuff as I was when I was a child. I preferably create all kinds of things, not just one sort of item. My projects are to make very small and huge paintings, make home decoration items like little stuffed houses ore dish cloths, to toys for kids like my picnic blankets. But also i like to make supplies that other people can use in their creative projects, like the hand printed fabrics and ribbons in my Etsy shop.

Since i was a little girl i can't remember not to be making stuff by hand. I loved to make toys for myself and even make toys for my toys. And as long as I can remember I had an incredible curiosity for all sorts of techniques to make my ‘stuff’ with. I wanted to learn what all the grownups did. For example when I was five or six I wanted to learn how to sew on a sewing machine very badly. My mother did not think that was a very good idea, which made me incredibly mad at the time. As I was very impatient I wanted to master EVERYTHING sooner than was probably good for me. This curiosity is something that still drives me today. It makes me not being able to stop hopping from one project to another in every free minute I have. It also makes me not being able to choose between all the different techniques available out there. I sometimes just HAVE to make something on my sewing machine, and a while later I just must make something using paint brushes. And even when I paint I often find it difficult to stick to one kind of paint, like acrylic, oil or with beeswax (my latest addiction) .

I live in a very very small apartment with my husband and 2 year old son. It’s almost all filled up with the things I might want to use to craft. Really horrible, I just can’t throw anything away. For example the little bottles you can buy baby food in, like vegetables and fruit. In the Netherlands they are called Olavrit bottles. I saved all of the bottles my son ever emptied out until now. WHY? Well I just like the form of the bottles so much, and THINK I will use them some day on some project. So bags and bags filled with these bottles are kept in our tiny apartment. You might be able to imagine that my husband is NOT very amused with all that I think is necessary for my crafts.

In my twenties I had a creative education, i went to the royal academy for arts, in the Netherlands. There i got my degree in pattern design and illustration.

After that i started to work as a freelance pattern designer. With the birth of my son 2 years ago, my time to do creative stuff got very limited, so i stopped working as a freelance designer. But water just has to flow where it’s supposed to, and so recently I started my own business and opened a shop on Etsy. What i like about this way of working is that it gives me absolute creative control over what I make. As my shop on Etsy reflects who I am and how I work, it holds a great variety of products, I sometimes worry it’s getting a bit to chaotic. So I desperately hope people feel the joy in those products which I felt when I made them instead of getting crazy of the diversity they see.

My fabric and others etsy shop; LeiLiLaLoo.etsy.com

My prints and paintings etsy shop; leililalooprints.etsy.com

My blog; leililaloo.blogspot.com/