Welcome to the Serious Creatures blog! To kick things off, I thought I’d share a bit about ourselves and how this little shop came into being. Ready?
The past seven years have been host to the hardest years of my life. I had to take care of a sick family member 24hrs a day, a hurricane destroyed the house we were living in, we moved to the middle of a small village in a Middle Eastern desert, my wife got depressed, and I was just not having an all around fun time; things got a little dark. But all of this craziness forced me to pick up a pencil after many years of neglect as I aimed to maintain my sanity.
We came home from the desert one summer a couple of years ago and a friend of ours asked if I might create some lunch box cards she could use to write notes for her kids on school days. She said she tried to draw her own pictures, but that her kids weren’t keen on them, and she thought my drawings could be a great fit for what she wanted.
It sounded like a fun project to draw lots of little ridiculous pictures, and Amber thought it might be a great product for the potential illustration shop we’d been discussing. For the next six months, she dove full-steam into learning all about e-commerce, blogging, how to run an online shop with downloadable and physical products, and the unusually difficult process of running a business from half way across the world.
Then, in Spring of 2013, Serious Creatures was born.
Twelve months later, we’ve arrived at a new chapter. There’s a new website, a new blog (hi!), a renewed vision for the business as a whole, and we’ve even re-designed our printable Mini Art Notes to be easier and more flexible than ever before.
We want to help people bring fun, joy, and imagination into their relationships, and while we’re proud of where we’re at today, we’re even more excited about the fun things up our sleeves for the future.
As we begin this new chapter with Serious Creatures, we are starting a new chapter in our personal lives, too. As I write this, we’re clearing out our little Oman apartment as we begin our transition to Beirut, Lebanon, where we’ll be working with a home for street kids called Home of Hope. I’ll be “directing” the school inside the home (these kids aren’t eligible to attend regular school), Amber will be helping with the many administrative needs, and all around we hope to spread a little hope in this dark corner of the world.
More and more we’re seeing how the imagination and whimsy we hope Serious Creatures brings to your relationships will help us bring the same to our relationships at Home of Hope. And we’re pretty excited about that.
As for this blog, our aim is to journey together toward encouraging imaginations and loving each other well. We’ll be sharing stories, helps for stoking kids’ imaginations, and ideas for bringing fun into everyday life.
Join us by subscribing to new posts by email, or connecting with us on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter. Hope to see you again soon!
