A little bit more than I sat down to write about my creative life so far

Being creative is something that I think we all have inside of us. Maybe not in the most obvious ways but creativity is an essential skill in life. When we’re children, we use images and draw disproportionate figures to express our feelings and to show off our talents. As we grow older, we either keep this love for creating some kind of visual aid to help people have a small insight into who we really are, or we develop our creativity in other ways like becoming excellent at solving problems or being a really persuasive person. Most people I know have a bit of both in them. Having never lost my passion for being creative in a more literal sense, most of my friends are also creatives- designers, artists, musicians etc.

I have been drawing or painting and generally making a mess for as long as I can remember. I have always taken great pride in my ability to do very precise and detailed drawings but as I have grown older, I have also learned to express myself through art, rather than it being all about the precision. I did art and textiles at High School and continued both subjects on to College where I met Rachel for the first time (we had art and textiles together, and history which we both dropped after the first year…!). I think it was my second year college tutor that really started to draw the creativity out of me. I did some really wacky stuff that year… one set of products I made were these really long “scarves” that were essentially metres of fabric that I had tie dyed in tea and turmeric. I had then sewn the sides together and stuffed them so they looked like a really long sausage. One of them looked like loads of giant cheese bites stuck together. They were supposed to be inspired by the Celts. I remember coming out wearing one of the three scarves for our Fashion Show with Rachel and my other friend Charlotte and the audience chuckling. It was never supposed to be serious or high fashion- although a lot of high fashion does look like that! Cue Gareth Pugh- it was just a way of me experimenting and having fun with my art. Anyway, it was these crazy scarves that got me into all of the Universities that I went to interview for. And so begins the next step of my creative life…

So I had a bit of a shakey start to Uni. I think that moving from a village of 300 people, most over fifty years old, to a booming city; 130 miles away from home; with nearly 300,000 people in it was a bit of a shock to the system. I found a few people in those first weeks that I’m still friends with today and managed to get through freshers (the scariest week of my life!) in one piece. In this time, I had also started what I had been dreaming of doing since I was 13, a Fashion Design Degree.

Rachel had come along to Nottingham Trent too, to do Textile Design. Trent is one of the most prestigious Universities, outside of London, to do design subjects in the Country so we both had a lot to live up to. It was a really exciting time for me, being tutored by some of the best Fashion Design tutors in the Country. Having lectures from massively successful people. It was all very inspiring and made me really want to succeed on this course.

I learnt so many technical processes… how to pattern-cut like they do in high fashion, and to manufacture as if I was working for Alexander McQueen. We learned how to draw properly, do real analytical research and drawings, design from our research, source fabrics, make toiles designed for our fabrics, how to make a good colour palette, how to style our final products, how to write about our work and all sorts of other things. I’m not going to lie, the course was intense, but then what Uni course isn’t?! I have found that a lot of people learn that you are doing a creative subject and they immediately think that it’s a doss around, and because we didn’t have any ‘sit down and write for three hours’ exams, it must be easy. Let me tell you it’s not. But it’s an experience and we all muddled through it together.

I came out of Uni with a Fashion Design degree, piles more knowledge than I had before, having lived away from home for three years and lived just me and my boyfriend for one of them. I had grown up a lot, learned a lot about the world and how ‘adulting’ works. And although there are things that I regret about my Uni experience, I wouldn’t change any of it because it’s taken me to where I am today.

Me and Rachel started CA.RA once I had finally given in and moved back to Norfolk in October 2018. It’s been a real learning curve for both of us but the most important thing is that we always enjoy it and we’re great friends! As well as doing CA.RA we both have jobs and gorgeous boyfriends, supportive families and the cutest, fluffiest cats. We’re both enjoying life and figuring out what it is that we want to do next, but rest assured, CA.RA will be there with us!

Me enjoying my third year boat ball!