You know how flowers can only grow from seeds that are planted and tended? I believe creativity is like that. It’s a seed that everyone possesses but may not bloom if it’s not planted and tended to. I count it a fortune of blessings that I've had people and experiences in my life that have given me the opportunity to bloom. I am building Speckled Creative as an overflow of that blessing in support of connecting you to your creative story.
Let me take a moment to share what’s brought me to this point in hopes that it gives you insight into my life while inspiring yours. I write this as a moment of celebrating creativity playing out over a lifetime, but not to create comparison to your own creative story. We each have so many unique and beautiful (and sometimes harder) experiences to bring to the table.
The Beginnings of a Creative Childhood
My childhood home is completely covered in my art. And not just my recent art. My parents have my elementary school watercolor seahorse art framed and displayed just as proudly as my college paintings from my n*de figure painting class 😅. I know, I know, you’re probably saying, “but Stephanie, of course! It's there because you are their kid!”
My response to you would be, how many adults can say that there is not one room in their parent’s house that doesn’t have some form of art that you’ve made? It’s a sign of parents who know their kid. And when you feel known your whole life, it’s the most nutritious soil for that creative seed to grow.
I owe a lot of my creative DNA to my mom. She would come into my school and lead the whole class through crafts. Her commitment to caring for us through my church's children's ministry should be studied as an art in itself. She sewed doll clothes with matching dresses for us, we did scrapbooking together, and endless crafts. Later on she started quilting and showed so much creativity and hard work on our kitchen table.
Making a Career Out of Being Artistically Creative
My love for art followed me throughout my entire education with teachers nurturing it along the way. I feel very fortunate for that to be my story.
In 2010, I received my acceptance letter to Virginia Tech for the Visual Communications Design program (aka graphic design). I still remember jumping up and down with excitement in the kitchen and my letter was thrown in the air landing in the wet sink (where panic ensued to try to save it).
My art and design professors lit a fire in me to reach new levels of creative potential, and each year it became more natural to see the world through creative eyes. At the same time, I was experiencing spiritual transformation through my involvement with a Christian college ministry where I matured in my faith and my sense of self as someone created by a loving Creator.
And here's where I try to rush to include 12 years of life experience in a very condensed way for the sake of saving you from how long this blog post could be if I include too much. 🙃
After I graduated college and got married in 2014, I stepped into a couple years of ministry.
In 2016, I was introduced to someone that had a vision for a start-up company that focused on social and emotional learning through several kinds of children's media. This was my dream job at the time. For 8 years I served as the creative director where I illustrated and designed dozens of books and media, even having several books in Chick-fil-A kids' meals (twice)! This experience deserves its own blog post to dive into how it challenged and molded me as a creative person, but for now, it's an important milestone in how I got to Speckled.
And now—after that very abbreviated timeline—we've reached the point of where Speckled begins. Each moment that I described above was necessary for what comes next.
How Speckled Creative Started
I reached a point of burn out while working for the start-up, so I started looking for another job while also exploring starting my own business.
In the beginning of 2023, I got a job working as a senior graphic designer at a children's education company. At the same time, I made my first instagram post announcing Speckled in January of 2023.
With art prints and a peace devotional ready to share, I launched an Etsy in 2023, and it wasn't until 2024 that I attended my first in-person market as a vendor. (I still have those products available here!) That moment shifted something in me. I loved being able to interact with customers in person, seeing reactions real time, and hone in on how I talk about my art and design.
It was also my first taste of what it would be like to do this while being a mom, because my 3-year-old daughter had stars in her eyes, and my 6-month-old needed me to go nurse him in the other room while my husband took over my table sales 😅.
Working Two Jobs while Being a Wife, Mom, Daughter, Friend, etc.
Since then—I'm writing this in July 2026—Speckled has transformed into Speckled Creative while I still worked my 9-5 corporate job (essentially working 2 jobs).
The past year has been spent waking up, getting the kids ready, working my full time job, having after-work family/friend time until their bedtime, and then working on Speckled Creative sometimes until 12:30 a.m. handmaking products for markets and working on my online presence. This is not impressive, it's a grind that is unsustainable. The only reason that I committed to this lifestyle was I knew it was only going to be a season (and I had the amazing support of my husband and friends).
I knew it was just a season, because, at the end of 2024, my husband and I made the commitment for me to work toward quitting my corporate job to do Speckled Creative full-time. We wanted to create a sustainable life that included more time with our kids, freedoms from the 9-5, and to follow a calling that was becoming clearer and clearer to us.
Obviously that has included sacrifices, but taking giant leaps of faith is not new to us. We believe in and can testify to a God that cares for the details of our lives in ways that we don't fully understand, and that gives us the courage to do things that may sound scary.
So What is the Heart of Speckled Creative?
While watching my 5-year-old daughter bloom into her own forms of creativity, I started asking myself some questions. How did my parents and teachers encourage my creative passions? And is there a way to take everything I've learned and help others connect with their creative story?
Also, I believe it's not a reach to say that we're all struggling in various ways with staying grounded in a life that's moving too fast and drifting from what our hearts long for. Creativity. Community. (And certainly in my case) the Creator.
So here it is, the heart of Speckled Creative.
Speckled Creative is committed to celebrate the creative story by:
- giving new life to old things by handmaking creatively-cute products with upcycled materials as tangible reminders that second chances are real
- empowering you to get creative through art, storytelling, and diy materials
- valuing the process of creating and not relying on AI to do it for us
If you've read this far, I'm shocked and honored 🤯🥰. And like I said in the beginning, creativity is a seed that we are all born with. We just need the time, experience, and support to tend it enough to see the blossoms in our lives. I pray that Speckled Creative can be a place that you feel tended to. I can't wait to see you blossom.
I hope you get to be creative today, and thank you so much for being here.
Xoxo, Stephanie
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