CCCOE Member Studio Tour ~ Featured Artist: Wrenay Charlton

Tell us a little about yourself and how it all began. My name is Wrenay Gomez Charlton (my etsy friends and some close family members call me Wren). Currently, I run a graphic design studio from my home office. I started making crafts after the birth of my second daughter, Mia (now 2 years old). Crafting was my way to have a creative outlet, since I had to put my conceptual art pursuits on the back burner to tend to the newbie in the house. I started off making felt plushies as Christmas presents, but then started to get custom requests from friends and friends of friends. Where do you work? Show us your space please! What is your favorite tool? I love working with my vintage cameras. I shoot a lot of photos, not only as a means to create art, but also product shots for my 3 etsy shops. I also cannot live without my sandpaper block-almost everything I create-at some point will come into contact with sandpaper. What time of the day are you the most productive/inspired? Because I work from home, I can fit blocks of time for my shops and crafting between everything else. But, I am most productive between 10PM and 1AM (when everyone else is asleep) What inspires you? Music, poetry, my kid's laughter, rain, cloudy days, memories, art supplies, the blank page and the smell of playdough. How do you promote yourself and your shop? I promote my shops at craft fairs and on my blog. I'm also on Trunkt and some other related sites. I just recently started advertising online, but its too soon to tell if that is driving traffic to my shops. I plan to launch a website for all my crafty endeavours in 2009. How long have you been on Etsy? I've been on Etsy as a buyer since Jul 24, 2006. I opened my first shop, Whimsy in Jan 2008, my second shop, Wrenay Gomez Charlton Photography in March 2008 and my third shop, The Crafty Wren, Sept 2008. What else do you enjoy doing other than creating? I like going on drives, listening to music...I waste a lot of time on Facebook. I meet my friends at least once a week, for coffee, museum/gallery visits, etc. What would you like to see happen/change with CCCOE? There are so many talented members, it would be great to have our own version of Etsylabs-CCCOElabs! What is your favorite thing about CCCOE? I have met so many wonderful people since joining CCCOE. I love the support I have received from other teamsters. Whether it be a friendly dispatch on the weekly thread, an uplifting convo or a visit to my booth at various craft fairs. There are a core group of members at the heart of this team and I have grown very fond of them all. What is your favorite food? Pizza Favorite book or movie? There are too many great ones to pick a favorite...but I'll give it a go... Some recent great movies I have seen include...The Diving Bell and Butterfly, Stepbrothers, Cinema Paradisio (this one is a fav I return to often) Books: Where the Sidewalk Ends, Wicked, anything by Edward Gorey or Bret Easton Ellis. I also love craft books, my favorites are Remake, Restyle, Reuse and Lotta Prints One thing you absolutely cannot live without? There are so many things that I would not want to live without (besides the aforementioned sandpaper block). But, since having kids, I have learned that there are a great many things that I can live without, after all. Lastly what piece that you have created is your favorite and why? My current fav is a set of notecards I made, using my own silhouette (from when I was 10) as the artwork. http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=15926583 Much of my conceptual art is based on my childhood memories. My eldest daughter is often the model in those photos-a stand-in for me as a child. This is one time, I actually got to use my own image from childhood to make something.