I'm married to Tina, the woman behind polkadotbug. She's sitting across the table from me right now. She's waving a seam ripper and making some vague threats about writing a short biography for the upcoming Indie Market. I'm going to comply. As Erin, of Elm Studios (what wonderful pottery) wrote for the very
first artist feature: "Everybody has a dream." She's right, of course. Tina's dream was to overflow our dining room with piles of beautiful fabric, tangled nests of polka-dotted ribbon and fragrant dust flying from her speeding shears. I do believe she has succeeded.
Hopefully, the scene in our house seems poetic. True, it's chaotic and a mess, but in a fantastic way, like stumbling in the laboratory of a mad scientist (her day job, actually). I think she'll be OK with me revealing that this hasn't been her dream forever.
There are, among others, two very important things that I've known about her since the day we met. She has the creative bug - you can see the glimmer in her eye when's she's at work at making something out of nothing. My mom still proudly displays the Christmas snowman lantern Tina made years ago, based on a large pickle jar. She made more than one, of course, and we were haunted by the smell of kosher dills for months. Several months ago, I came home and found her sitting in front of an old sewing machine, from her mother, making covers for small packages of tissues, to be given out at a baby shower. She had volunteered to supply the favors and thought it seemed like a neat idea. They were a big hit. That was day one.
On day two, she was glued to the computer reading crafty blogs and filling her mind with ideas.
On days three through seven, the fabric arrived.
Some days later (time started getting a little crazy at this point), she discovered that Caren, an old friend from high school (and fellow Indie Marketer) had also developed a significant sewing addiction, and off they went, learning together...
The second important thing about Tina is her passion for babies and children. The head-on collision of sewing and babies that sprang from the shower favors set off a chain reaction, that at this point, appears to be unstoppable. Not happy simply supplying adorable bonnets and dresses for our two girls (polka dot and bug), it seems that she's not going to rest until every girl is adorned in her flowered, striped and polka-dotted creations.
Personally, I love seeing Tina dedicated, excited and proud of what she's doing. And on top of cutting, stitching, assembling and selling, she's also helping, and she takes an enormous amount of satisifaction in that as well. About a week after noticing how many people were landing on
her blog looking for instructions for sewing a reversible dress, she had a complete tutorial with pictures available. Now she's constantly looking at how many people are landing on that tutorial and every time a new one shows up, there's a smile and often a "woo hoo!"
The girls and I are so proud. Put down the seam ripper, honey.
Right now, I am working on developing perfumed oils that contain no alcohol and hope to have them on the market by October. Making soap and bath products is a perfect fit for me as a stay-at-home , homeschooling Mom. It allows me the opportunity to be with my children and still contribute to the family income. I love running my own home based business, and hope it continues to grow!
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