After eight years of pursuing my lifelong passion of being a working artist, I’ve been asked by a few friends to share the first six of which were dedicated to the macrame artform. This is a story with many ups and downs, but I believe the thread of mercy and hope shine loudest through it all!
After ten years of being a stay-at-home mom, I desired to explore my creativity more steadily. I would like to start with taking you back to fall 2018, when I took Painting 101 at the University of Saskatchewan. I finished the course with an accepted floral painting into the group exhibition held at the University Gallery. At the same time, I started exploring macrame learning different techniques via YouTube. My three boys were in school, so I just had my three-year-old daughter in tow. I craved a new challenge, something that I could put my mind to. I came across a macrame wall-hanging online that I adored. We had a large, vaulted ceiling in our living room at the time, and I wanted something, other than a painting, to fill the space above our couch. This was the beginning of my curiosity about macrame.
During the first year of experimenting with macrame, I taught myself many knots by following YouTube tutorials. I tried to come up with my own designs. I started selling macrame through Facebook marketplace and through my Instagram account. I did my first outdoor art market that summer. In the fall of 2019, our family moved from Saskatoon to Calgary. What an adjustment! – to move my baby art business and find new collectors. I did not have an e-commerce website or platform of any kind for my Saskatoon collectors to shop or browse.
(Calgary Studio)
I must admit, my husband and I did not agree completely on this new macrame endeavor. He had always supported my creativity but did not think that the timing of starting a small business was quite right. There was a lot of interest in the macrame I was making, and I was selling items. This was exciting for me, but not necessarily for him. He expressed his objections once – quite strongly, but he let me find my way. He supported me at markets and even helped me build various wooden displays for my art and many more behind the scenes things.
At the beginning of 2020, on my thirty-second birthday, I opened my Etsy shop – an online marketplace for vintage and handmade items. It was a steep learning curve to figure out this new platform, not being super techy, but I was up for the challenge! Now I had a place to send people, and this helped keep things in order – I could see all my inventory in one place. It was exciting to have an online shop; keep track of sales; and be in touch with those back in Saskatoon and my family and friends in BC.
(32nd Birthday)
Then COVID hit! I was quite determined to keep this art journey going and to think of creative ways to connect with collectors. I found online markets to join and stayed relevant on Instagram. I created small items like keychains, car charms, coasters – and bigger items like shelves, pot hangers and wallhangings. I mostly created with white macrame cord, which gave a defined style to my business. In 2021, I started to add soft neutral colours to my macrame. As my business grew that spring I created a large earth-toned piece for South Centre Mall in Calgary. The size of the finished macrame was 5’ x 4’ and it took three men to hang it. I created it on a thick heavy branch to be displayed high on a wall. During this time, I continued doing markets and had the smaller items available in several handmade shops around town. I started to enjoy creating my own patterns for wallhangings and leaned into this broader aspect of my work. However, behind the scenes, I was struggling with my mental health. When 2022 rolled around, these mental health struggles took over my life. I had a very dark day of being suicidal, which needed hospitalization for a day.
I made it through that dark season by God’s miraculous power. This was clear in my macrame. I really broke free and expressed my gratitude for my life with the use of full colour in my art. I produced my best-selling design with a full eclectic colour variation, titled Freedom. I will always cherish that piece.
(Freedom 2.0)
Working on my mental health is one of the hardest things I do. As necessary as medication and therapy are, it is in the creative process itself where God meets and is healing me. Creating in colour brought a newfound joy in making tapestries. I can convey life experiences, joy filled moments, authentic depth, and connections of love. I learned to lean more on God that year and launched a website! My art gained more symbolic meaning and stemmed from the stirring of the Holy Spirit within me.
Then our family moved again – another provincial leap – from Calgary to Abbotsford. In 2023, I turned my attention to creating only macrame wall hangings. It was all about colour, curiosity, intrigue, stories, what God was up to and a whole lot of grit. I had another new city to navigate the art scene in, another opportunity to find connections. This time though I had a website. I tried my best to stay organized (always a work in progress). In our new home, I was blessed with a large art studio, room for supplies, materials, finished works to hang and a desk under the window. I could delight in my God and create with ease.
However, I was racking up debt, believing that you must spend money to make money. I went on my first artist retreat – just what my soul needed – kindred spirits encouraged me, gave insight, and offered much needed connection. That fall, I had my first gallery exhibitions with macrame; but I learned the hard way that my art was not at that level yet and it did not sell. Even so, I experienced the thrill of winning a Lifestyle Arts Awards and became a published artist! On the outside things looked good, but my heart was still trying to serve God and prove myself at the same time. I was not wholly set apart for the Lord.
With 2024 came a whole new level of determination and change. Out of His kindness the Lord provided a piano teaching job to start paying off debt. At the same time, I worked hard towards my first solo exhibition. I planned out and created twenty pieces to be exhibited for three months in the fall. I tried my best to wrap up all creating, writing and emails before the summer adventures that needed to happen for our family. That summer was like nothing we had ever experienced before. After a beautiful summer with my family, the Solo Exhibition titled The Power of Surrender began, I felt very loved and supported by family and friends, but by the end of the three months, only one small wall-hanging had sold. I had not created anything new since completing the works for this show and my passion for macrame was waning.
(The Power of Surrender - Solo Exhibition)
At this point my husband and I felt the Lord wanted us to strip back some layers and surrender even more to Him. We sold our house, chose to switch to online schooling with our kids and moved to Chilliwack. 2025 came with a new journey for my family. After much prayer and time considering, I decided to mark down the price of all forty-two wallhangings that I had left and work to find collectors for each one. I felt the Lord calling me back to Himself. As I drew closer to Him, I felt myself return to my childlike wonder. I felt Him ask me, to let Him fuel my creativity like nothing I knew before, to let Him speak through me in a new way. As I unpacked in another new space, rested in Him and gradually felt my feet under me once again, I found the materials I have always loved to play with. Since I was a girl, I have enjoyed expressing myself through paint, collage, sketching and words.
By summer of 2025 I had just six wallhangings left, my business debt paid off (Praise the Lord!) and a new collection of canvases filled with paint and collage bringing His message. Upon reflection, I can see the Lord’s hand pulling me through ever so gently. My heart still needed work, and it still does. My intentions may have been to give Him the glory, but all the while I wanted to prove myself. I wanted to prove I had the means to do something great. I needed to walk through the past six years to see that He is far greater and no matter how hard I push; He will always get the glory.
By the end of 2025, with my husband’s encouragement and covering now, I’d completed two mixed media collections and launched them on my website. They're titled All Will Be Made New and Immerse. Embarking on a new year, I had several fresh habits under my belt that I continued from 2025: daily in his word, prayer journalling, an art practice (even just 15min a day counts) and intentionally inviting the Lord into every aspect of creativity in my life. This year I have started praying about what I post on social media, what I write in my blog posts, who He would like me to reach out to and what He would like to impart through the creativity He has put in me.
(All Will Be Made New Collection)
Another new thing I am doing in 2026, I am reading! I wanted to share with you a couple of excerpts from the fourth book I read this year titled Unlocking the Heart of the Artist by Matt Tommey.
Co-labouring in the Kingdom:
· You were created to co-labour with Christ in the Kingdom of God through your unique creative expression. God has promised the secrets of the Kingdom as your inheritance (Luke 8:10). That means God has ideas, strategies and insight into situations that you are passionate about, and He wants to reveal those strategies to you to see His Kingdom established on earth. He has chosen to use you to do the works of the Kingdom by His power in your generation. Not simply “For God” but with God. This dynamic relationship of co-creating with the Holy Spirit is the foundation for every person in the Kingdom, but especially artists. Otherwise, our efforts can easily become based in striving rather then guided by grace.
Reading this confirmed everything I had just walked through in my creative endeavours over the last several years. My heart is so ready to do this fully with Him. When I try to tighten my grasp, try to take control, I am inevitably putting the outcome on my own shoulders. When I loosen my grasp in surrender to Him, I am giving Him the outcome as well. I am finding this so much more freeing, much less to carry and just a beautiful gift as it was always intended to be.
Just a couple of weeks before I started reading Unlocking the Heart of the Artist, the Lord gave me a vision. I saw a whimsical lampstand with a blossom light. I did not know why for a day or so until He revealed to me, that it was me. I burst out in tears. It seemed too beautiful. His spirit said to me, “Keep letting me fill you and you will keep getting brighter.”
Then I read this excerpt from the book…
Transmitting the Power of God:
· It is important to understand that prophecy is not just the communication of mere information. Prophetic utterance is literally the transmission of the power of God through revelation of the Holy Spirit. The word ‘prophecy’ comes from the route word “light” or “illumination.” We must understand, therefore, that Jesus is the one who provides the illumination. Prophecy is supernatural communication, given to us by the Father to be a light in the earth and a witness to the lost so they will come to know Jesus. Just as the two witnesses in Revelation chapter 11 were called “lampstands” so are we called to burn with the fire of God and bring illumination to a dark world!
The Holy Spirit confirmed the vision in my soul. He is truly opening me up to shine through!
To you, beautiful humans who collected macrame created between 2019-2025, please know that you have a special piece of my heart. Each macrame marked a step in the path forward, the path the Lord invited me down to expand His Kingdom purposes through me. Each collector is holding a unique piece of art that will never be replicated again, one-of-a-kind, with sweat, tears and worship as I found my way through the years and fell even more in love with my Saviour. You, generous collector, have encouraged me to keep moving forward. I hope you’re just as excited as I am to see what the Lord has for us next. Let’s knock and see together!
(lamp post from my new neighbourhood)