With a background in textile and industrial design, Choedamphai enjoys experimenting with different materials, colors, and textures, combining different techniques such as watercolor, paper folding, and collage. “I’ve been making things since I was a child because my mom was always encouraging us,” she relayed in an interview with the Etsy blog. “Even if she was just baking, she might give us a little bit of dough so we could make our own version of bread. Now, I can’t not be making things, so of course, I have lots of supplies in my studio, and after a while, I started selling them along with my own designs.”

According to Choedamphai, it all started in April 2012, when she made a dinosaur pop-up card for her 3-year-old nephew who absolutely loved it. She went on to launch her business in July 2012, while still living in Oxford, UK, working from her bedroom and garden shed. Having moved back to her home town in Thailand, she decided to expand this business and added a range of carefully selected craft supplies and handmade hair accessories.

“I’ve always been drawn to textures and love running my hands over them,” says Choedamphai. “Generally, I won’t use a material if I don’t like how it feels, and I’m very picky.” According to Choedamphai, the handmade paper in Thailand, made from mulberry tree bark, has a rich texture to it – the sort of perfect imperfections she’s drawn to when choosing her materials.

Below you find some of the products she offers in her shop:

The post Looking for Ways to Fill Up the Time? Why Not Try Crafting appeared first on PlayJunkie.

In college, she studied photography and became a professional photographer. She eventually decided to try something new and applied to a graduate program in marriage and family therapy,  which led to an internship in a rehabilitation facility. There she learned the true power of art: she helped her patients express themselves with colors and lines. She learned how therapeutic art really was, so she decided to share her discovery with the world, through her IG account, The DIYDay.

On her account, Renee shares crafting videos and tutorials, and pictures of her own creations. She knows the process can be as fun and relaxing as the final outcome, which is why she often shares pictures of her process as well as the results.

Her colorful creations have gained her over 250 thousand followers who enjoy seeing art being made as much as they enjoy the finished products. Today she focuses on spreading the gospel of crafting around the world and giving as many people as possible the gift of creating with their own hands.  

The post This Photographer Has Discovered the True Power of Art appeared first on PlayJunkie.

“When I look back at my childhood I realize that my path in the craft and lifestyle world was pretty much set from the start,” she admitted in an interview with Mom Filter. “I loved making things and was always hoarding cardboard and other materials for crafts, planning parties and decorating for holidays. I pored over every women’s or lifestyle magazine that my mom bought and made a series of tiny, strange fashion and food magazines.”

This passion continued, and after graduating from RISD (where she studied painting) she found a perfect job in the Craft Department at Martha Stewart Living, where she worked for over 19 years.

Her job? Transforming everyday items into works of magic. Based in Brooklyn with her husband Fred and two sons, Sammy and Lionel, she has made an Elizabethan princess costume out of coffee filters, a parking garage for kids made entirely of toilet paper and paper towel tubes and cardboard boxes, and even her own wedding flowers made from crepe paper.

“I’m not sure that becoming a parent shaped my choice of work,” she says. “I always loved creating crafts for kids and pushed for doing the kids magazine at Martha Stewart way before I had kids. I do, however, think that the ideas that I came up with after becoming a parent, whether for kid’s crafts, birthday parties or recipes, were much much simpler!”

Follow her Instagram page for a pop of inspiration.

The post Jodi Levine Transforms Everyday Items Into Works of Magic appeared first on PlayJunkie.

With a background in textile and industrial design, Choedamphai enjoys experimenting with different materials, colors, and textures, combining different techniques such as watercolor, paper folding, and collage. “I’ve been making things since I was a child because my mom was always encouraging us,” she relayed in an interview with the Etsy blog. “Even if she was just baking, she might give us a little bit of dough so we could make our own version of bread. Now, I can’t not be making things, so of course, I have lots of supplies in my studio, and after a while, I started selling them along with my own designs.”

According to Choedamphai, it all started in April 2012, when she made a dinosaur pop-up card for her 3-year-old nephew who absolutely loved it. She went on to launch her business in July 2012, while still living in Oxford, UK, working from her bedroom and garden shed. Having moved back to her home town in Thailand, she decided to expand this business and added a range of carefully selected craft supplies and handmade hair accessories.

“I’ve always been drawn to textures and love running my hands over them,” says Choedamphai. “Generally, I won’t use a material if I don’t like how it feels, and I’m very picky.” According to Choedamphai, the handmade paper in Thailand, made from mulberry tree bark, has a rich texture to it – the sort of perfect imperfections she’s drawn to when choosing her materials.

Below you find some of the products she offers in her shop:

The post Looking for Ways to Fill Up the Time? Why Not Try Crafting appeared first on PlayJunkie.

In college, she studied photography and became a professional photographer. She eventually decided to try something new and applied to a graduate program in marriage and family therapy,  which led to an internship in a rehabilitation facility. There she learned the true power of art: she helped her patients express themselves with colors and lines. She learned how therapeutic art really was, so she decided to share her discovery with the world, through her IG account, The DIYDay.

On her account, Renee shares crafting videos and tutorials, and pictures of her own creations. She knows the process can be as fun and relaxing as the final outcome, which is why she often shares pictures of her process as well as the results.

Her colorful creations have gained her over 250 thousand followers who enjoy seeing art being made as much as they enjoy the finished products. Today she focuses on spreading the gospel of crafting around the world and giving as many people as possible the gift of creating with their own hands.  

The post This Photographer Has Discovered the True Power of Art appeared first on PlayJunkie.

“When I look back at my childhood I realize that my path in the craft and lifestyle world was pretty much set from the start,” she admitted in an interview with Mom Filter. “I loved making things and was always hoarding cardboard and other materials for crafts, planning parties and decorating for holidays. I pored over every women’s or lifestyle magazine that my mom bought and made a series of tiny, strange fashion and food magazines.”

This passion continued, and after graduating from RISD (where she studied painting) she found a perfect job in the Craft Department at Martha Stewart Living, where she worked for over 19 years.

Her job? Transforming everyday items into works of magic. Based in Brooklyn with her husband Fred and two sons, Sammy and Lionel, she has made an Elizabethan princess costume out of coffee filters, a parking garage for kids made entirely of toilet paper and paper towel tubes and cardboard boxes, and even her own wedding flowers made from crepe paper.

“I’m not sure that becoming a parent shaped my choice of work,” she says. “I always loved creating crafts for kids and pushed for doing the kids magazine at Martha Stewart way before I had kids. I do, however, think that the ideas that I came up with after becoming a parent, whether for kid’s crafts, birthday parties or recipes, were much much simpler!”

Follow her Instagram page for a pop of inspiration.

The post Jodi Levine Transforms Everyday Items Into Works of Magic appeared first on PlayJunkie.