My mum used to say to me I should tell people where I grew up, but I always thought it was just a place with crazy hippies living in domes and dens in the bush!
I grew up in an artists community in the 70's near Melbourne. Painter Clifton Pugh named it "dunmuchin" and it now seems like a dirty word, everyone knows it.
But I wasn't inspired by the locals to become an artist, they were all crazy drug, drunk and poor. The community was NEVER dull!!!
I used to make cities out of my dads sand piles and thought I'd be an architect, but I also saved sugar ants from drowning in puddles,
and layered myself with as many outfits that I nearly always fell over!! So who knows where we find our groove.
It took me 6 years of art & textile design to realise that the medium that cranked my handle was - scissors, paper, glue! I yo-yoed between print & knit
Juggle that with a surprise baby and you have a Fredrick McCubbin pioneers painting!!!
a child's imagination, play school!!
My home & garden & little makers
Shoe box of riffraff that seems to be mandatory in the bush. Spreadings of the rusty tin shed.
I used to dream of volcanic undulating dairy farming like landscapes, and somehow I am in the same setting I grew up in. Go figure!!
40 acres of fire hungry bush, a solar system that could feed an entire thai village, a composting dunny that never smells, a 3000litre worm farm that feeds our riffraff
veggie patch and a continuos amount of farming like upkeep!!!
Shoe box of riffraff and eye candy have made it's way to the shop!!
I dreamed when I gave birth to our little girl Wilkie, of another baby. That baby had a lovely window I could
decorate for the small town of Castlemaine and inside create a world of imagination and play for the gazzillions of families flocking to the good life!!
Little Makers is still a baby but already the window is drawing regular curiosity, the art & craft workshops are creating dreamy kids and the eye candy is inspiring all who enter.
This is not your average store, even for city standards. Art and craft classes for kids, teenagers and adults along with craft kits and inspirational kit ideas, which are all made in the store
so that the consumption of plastic and puff packaging is non existent. And the awareness that hand made objects are precious and have or create a story to share.
The balance is to know when to create or do the dishes or fall asleep while watching play school!