Featured Seller: lovemaestore

lovemaestore

Story by lovemaestore

Published on Dec 06, 2010 in Shop

Photo by lovemaestore

Tell us a bit about yourself.

We are Bec, Peta and Emily, and with our powers combined, we are (Love) Mae. We make reusable fabric wall decals, mainly for children, as well as the young and lovely at heart. Mae is over a year old and is based in the beautiful village of Stokers Siding, Northern NSW, Australia. Our studio is surrounded by FS_lovemae_4.jpgtrees, a creek and all sorts of animals.

Apart from creating things, what do you do?

We don’t have time for anything else! When we find a spare moment, Peta spends time with her two beautiful girls and wonderful partner doing a bit of DIY renovations on her little cottage in the country, Em goes jogging by the beach and looks after her sweet little cacti, and I (Bec) hang out with my cats and husband and bake all sorts of wonderfully unhealthy things.

What first made you want to become an artist?

I always loved creating things, ever since I can remember, and Em is the same. We just can’t imagine doing anything else. My parents encouraged me to study graphic design, although at the time I wanted to do something science-related. Peta remembers being forced to study math and science in high school despite truly knowing that she wanted to be a photographer. Fortunately, she returned to her passion 10 years later.

FS_lovemae_1.jpgPlease describe your creative process.

While Em and I are the designers of the trio, we are all very creative and each have a say in what we will produce next. Em and I will often sketch designs first, and when we are happy with a concept, we create the final designs on the computer. When we are all satisfied, we take the designs to our local printer to be printed and cut on our reusable adhesive fabric (for wall stickers), or on 100% recycled paper (for our range of wrapping paper).

What handmade possession do you most cherish?

Mine is a family portrait of myself, my fiancé and our cats, painted by Audrey Malo. Peta’s favourite is a small blanket for her oldest girl that has a whole cottage and garden scene embroidered on it — oh my goodness, it’s fantastic! Em’s is a beautifully detailed leather wallet her dad crafted for his grandmother 25 years ago, which has since been passed on to her in mint condition.

FS_lovemae_2.jpgWhat advice would you give to artists who are new to Etsy?

It’s all about your photography and customer service. You will have heard this a million times before, but please, please, please do not underestimate good, clear photography.

What are your favorite features on Etsy? What new features would you like to see?

My favourite thing is seeing the constantly updated front page. I don’t have a lot of time to browse for beautiful products, so I like that someone else has done the work for me. I would REALLY love to see an automatic relist feature for items that are easily replicated. Being on the other side of the world, we quite often wake up with an empty shop and have slept through the whole shopping event. We fear that some people don’t really see our full range of items if we slept through them being sold.

fs_lovemae_3.jpgHow do you promote your work?

We have a blog, and we do the occasional giveaway on other blogs that we love. We also advertise in a few online magazines: only the most beautiful ones, like Papier Mache, Small, LMNOP and Maeve. We would like to mention that we never would have had our work ‘out there’ if it weren’t for the Etsy community that supported us with their blog posts and treasuries. Honestly, we can’t believe how much people help each other on Etsy — it’s amazing.

In ten years, where would you like to be?

Hmmm.. somewhere pretty similar to where I am now, but in a light-filled house with a big yard, a puppy and some little ones. Peta hopes to be back where she can smell the salt air when her girls are a little older, as well as still enjoying the wonderful world that Mae brings. Emily would like to be in a beautiful, old house (maybe in Australia or overseas) with her pet bulldog. Yes, that would be very nice!

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