Here at The Making Life, we strongly value local makers. As many of you know, when you support local makers and small-time businesses, you’re making a huge difference. One sale can bring great joy to a maker, as opposed to a drop in the bucket to major corporations.

You may not realize it, but there are likely tons of makers in your area. Some simply make for pleasure or hobby, and some do so to support their families. Either way, we want to take the time to highlight these artisans and creators. Hopefully, their work will inspire you to get started.

Who is She, and What Does She Do?

Shennandoah is a graphic designer, and she also puts her Cricut to good use. She creates a number of things including custom clothing products, stickers and decals, print publications, custom sign painting, and social media graphics, and more.

Her business is called ReparTee Designs, and you can visit her Facebook page to see more of her work.

How Did We Meet?

This weekend my friend and I visited a local mini-festival at a place called The 7th St. Marketry.

They had candy spots set up all over their store for the children, and they had a couple of craft areas too. The kids painted pumpkins and made lollipop ghosts and spiders. It was a lot of fun. Shennandoah was generous enough to set up a booth and allow people to stop by and make their own signs! She used stencils that she created on her Cricut, and wooden signs that she cut out and stained herself.

She taught us how to transfer the stencil to our wooden signs, and then we used little make-up sponges to paint in the stencils. The paint she used is a chalk paint called Dixie Belle paints. I was amazed by how little paint you needed to finish a sign.

Our Finished Signs

The signs took only a few minutes to create, but the results were beautiful.

The Local Maker Community

As we continue to grow at The Making Life, we would love to continue this series on local makers. Stay tuned for more posts like this, and hopefully a podcast in the future.