Category Archives: Studio

A Bit Of YouTube For You

Monday, August 31, 2020

I have been making D.I.Y. project based YouTube videos weekly since we closed due to COVID 19.
My goal has been to bring the Creating-A-Home series, a long standing post series I have been sharing on instagram to a more personal level with kids and families through video. I want to not just give you an idea but do it with you.

Through it I hope to engage a more connected creating at home connection to viewers. To give you a hand to hold, encouragement to create with a simple idea, then fly your own way with it.

Most materials I use can be found around the house, if not easy replacers. That’s the fun of it, wok with what you’ve got. There’s a White Stripes Song, Rag and Bone, where Jack White talks through the the song about making stuff from things he finds around a house.

Creating-at-home is the kind of activity that brings you to the moment, gets you in a fun zone.
Join me on my creative reuse journey on YouTube. We’ll make something together and you’ll enjoy a little creativity in your day.

Expose Your Kids To Art

Tuesday, August 18, 2020

“Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.”
-Edgar Degas

Edgar said it pointedly, art makes us see things. Often in our daily lives we may not see things the way we do in art because we live them. We are too close to them. We have expectations, we anticipate outcomes.

Art takes us away, it pulls our thinking in new directions. The pieces we see stir curiosity, wonder and sometimes a strong sense of feeling. What a gift art is for us.

Art stirs the same expansive openness for children too. Once when my girls were small we were in London and visited the National Gallery. They had a room where all the art was placed on the lower third of walls with little question prompts for kids and families that invited the open thinking pathway. This is the stuff we want our kids to keep as they grow.

We are fortunate to have museums in abundance in and around the Los Angeles area that welcome kids. Even more so we have great museums right here north of LA. Just a few to note in Malibu’s Getty Villa, Thousand Oaks’ CMATO, Camarillo’s KidSTREAM, Ventura’s Ventura Museum of Art and Santa Barbara’s Moxi and Museum of Natural History.

Though museums are not open right now, most have interactive programing that invite art exploration. Here’s a list to explore.

Lastly, my favorite go-to museum app for well rounded access to art is Google’s Arts & Culture where you have regular prompts to view art pieces, themes, history and more.

Women in Business

Monday, August 10, 2020

A monthly blog series

A list of women leading Fortune 500 Companies came up on Google the other day. I don’t know how I got there but, curiously I looked over the list. There are 37 Female CEO’s on this years list, making up 7.4% of the total Fortune 500 CEO’s. That count is a record high but this area isn’t really my interest. It did get me thinking of women in business though.

I’m a woman in business. I running a small company. I don’t think of myself unless I have something about woman in business to frame it against. I have two daughters who are entering the work force and have interests in particular career fields. As a mom, I want them to have the freedom to pursue whatever their career interests become so, in that mindset I would like to see the Fortune 500 list expand to include more women and more diversity with women.

Aspirations to make the Fortune 500 list is not my desire today, but I do like being in business for myself. I enjoy being my own boss and doing the deciding. Contributing my community through my investment in creative reuse the way I envision it is gratifying. I love marrying the less likely but more importantly connective nature of creating and recycling. I like how it connects kids to their ideas, families with each other and communities together.

I’d like to share the being my own boss-experience without all the paperwork that goes with being a boss. I want to connect other women with their desire to lead their own paths.

Working on the next steps for CReATE STUDIO includes women in communities across our counties ( we border two here) and beyond. I don’t need to be on someone else’s list of women, I want to build a list of women to create with me.

This journey is just beginning. The lists I am making now will help me have the list of women I am envisioning.

This blob starts an ongoing series around women in business. Monthly I’ll share about women I know and women I meet. This is part of my process for creating.

Jemma W.
Founder & Owner

This tip gets kids creating at home.

Monday, July 27, 2020

Kids need to create. It’s part of how their brain works.

This tip gets your kids creating at home-fast. Save the various packagings for foods, packages that are delivered and the items you buy. Save T.P. rolls, pen caps and even printer paper that didn’t print right. Need more ideas for things from around the house? Our donation list is a great start.

Recyclables are awesome materials for your kids to reuse by creating with them. They help ideas come to life. They may be playing with all their favorite figures and decide they need a time machine. They can make one with some of the recycled supplies you’ve collected! They may need a room, a car, a bed. All kinds of things become possible when they have these raw materials on hand.

Using the tissue box or the paper towel role as they play amps up their thinking and creating to a new level. Creating with the random things around them is brain food for kids!

So save packaging bits and pieces as they come through your home. It’s a simple tip with amazing benefits for your kids brains!

We come to you

Tuesday, June 9, 2020
We think it’s great.

Mobile making with CReATE is our new approach to art into our community.

Yesterday I provided a small social distance gathering for one of our CReATE Families and a few neighborhood kids who’d spent the last few months together.

It was so good to start creating again, watching kids explore materials that inspired them, then creating to their hearts content. They were busy and engaged throughout my time with them which felt like we had never stopped creating together.

When our time together done I was talking to the host parent. He wondered if I needed to bring all the things that I did? “it’s my goal to provide you a studio experience at home”., he replied, “oh, you have done that”. What may seem like a simple response from him felt like a huge compliment for my efforts to bring families and the community at large the studio we’ve always known studio four walls.

Anywhere four wheels can go we’ll be there to provide a creative experience. Whether it be outside, in the shade, under the stars or even indoors I am excited about where we can be. Fresh air is a favorite of mine and a huge part of my mobile inspiration, a little like art in nature.

On the Move

Monday, June 1, 2020
At Least in spirit.

Our wheels aren’t rolling just yet but we’ve got forward creative momentum. “Those who move forward with a happy spirit will find that things always work out”-Unknown.

We are excited to partner with the City of Malibu and our friends at Little Fox Yoga to bring artful yoga fun to little ones later this month. We’re continuing our Eco Art Zoom workshops through the end of June and posting weekly creating at home projects on YouTube too. We’re also hosting our annual Camp CReATE summer camp weeks, in July in partnership with the City of Agoura Hills.

Before long we hope to get back to celebrating birthdays, hosting Family Fun experiences at Libraries and Museums and eventually school campus activities.

We’ll all get back to many of the good things we love over time. For now though we at CReATE plan to roll with the flow in spirit at first and then, with all wheels on the ground. Check out out happenings page for up to date events and experiences we’ll be traveling to.

Learn more about our mobile story here.

Patience

Monday, May 25, 2020

We have been in a Covid 19 swirl of change, loss, sickness, growth, uncertainty and creativity for the last two plus months.

The pandemic has certainly been a force behind our mobile “pivot”, as Ross Geller of Friends would say. I realize that patience is our calling as phase two of California’s reopening process unfolds.

I am anxious to start creating again but the time is not quite right. Our nerves are tender, we’re feeling cautious. I’ll be ready when our families can gather, our rec facilities can reopen and we’ll feel ready to reassemble in some revised way. CReATE will be there, on the go and popping up to share creative time with our communities. I am excited for that time but patient for the process as we continue to take things one day at a time.

In the meantime we’ll continue to see one another virtually. I am grateful for that option and always warm hearted at the sights, sounds and prospects of kids and families creating together.
Learn more about our mobile pivot here.

Jemma W. Owner

Today is a gift

Monday, May 18, 2020

So let’s make one.

Whenever I feel uncertain about things I look to quotes for comfort. There is always something that speaks to brighter days that lifts me up. Today as I pondered some of my favorite quotes, I came to this jewel by Eleanor Roosevelt. “Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift. That is why they call it the present.”

She always knew what to say and this quote is no exception. As we navigate this uncharted time I appreciate her poignant quote. In fact, it inspired me to think win win. Here’s an opportunity to enjoy the gift of today and make a gift today for someone else! That’ll be three gifts on one. The gift of the day itself, the gift of giving and the gift of receiving a gift!

One of the things I loved to do as a child was to make gifts for my parents and friends. Today my fellow parents, your kids can too. The feeling from creating for someone will have a lasting effect of goodness and the day will have proven itself to indeed be a gift.

Creating is such a useful avenue of self expression. Eleanor shared her creativity with us in the way she used her words and more. I hope her words inspire your family to. Make this day a gift to share.

Jemma W.
Owner

I’m Rooted

Monday, May 4, 2020

The strength in me comes from the roots of my women.

I think of the month of May as one big Mothers Day.
Reflecting on being a mother and having a mother are always the thoughts I begin with. Today though, I got to thinking of more of the women in my life and those who were gone when I got here.

They have helped to shape me. My Mother, Aunt and daughters are kin, but women of our pasts and of their pasts, and their pasts pasts are where it began. Every one of them have had some influence over who I am today.

I relish the idea of these women, one of whom in the early 1900’s made cough syrup from an onion for her children because it was practical, who cleaned counter tops with lye because it worked. These women were strong. Roots for who we could be in the years ahead because they heeded the advice of their mothers, aunts and cousins.

In this slowed down time I can ponder the wisdom, power and intention of the women in my family who have always done what needed doing any time of day or night. As the generations became more contemporary these women rooted to their histories to grow their own personal powers to work in male dominant fields.


Because of all of the efforts of the women in my family I can be a woman (with an incomplete college education) who started a business in my garage because I dreamed it.

I hope to pass on the roots that were deepened for me to my girls. The history of the ladies in our family line is the footing they use to go forward on their paths.

What a gift.
Jemma W.
Owner/Founder
CReATE STUDIO

Big News!

Saturday, May 2, 2020

It’s official!
We’re taking our studio on the road full time in a mobile pop-up format.
Instead of coming to us, we come to you for birthday parties, field trips, camps, community events, workshops, tinkering time and so much more.
The sky’s the limit now!
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