Ep. 40 Infusing Joy, Creativity, and Fun into Our Lives, Crafting a Life You Love, and #AveryHeartsAmy with Amy Tangerine
Happy #SeekTheJoy Tuesday!
Image provided by AVERY
On the podcast this week is Amy Tan, award-winning designer and craft expert, and the founder of Amy Tangerine - a creative lifestyle company that creates online content as well as fun products like t-shirts and craft supplies. She's also the author of "Craft a Life You Love: Infusing Creativity, Fun, and Intention Into Your Everyday"
Amy has given workshops all over the world, she has an awesome YouTube channel, she consults with brands and clients, and her mission is to inspire people everywhere to feel joy and confidence by infusing creativity, fun and intention into their every day.
On today's episode we chat all about Amy's love for color, design, and where sharing her creativity began, the connection between creativity and joy (it's huge!!), tools that Amy relies on to help her craft a positive mindset and how she wants to feel, the importance of feeding your soul with things you love, her brand new (and AMAZING!) collaboration with AVERY, and SO much more.
Amy is BEYOND talented and she's proof that you can craft a life you love (totally stole that line from her book!) Born and raised in Chicago, Amy spent much of her childhood wallpapering her bedroom walls with colorful and glamorous pages of fashion magazines. She's an only child, and a lot of her creativity came from being bored. If you think about it - it makes SO much sense. When we're bored we're forced to explore our imaginations and really tap into our creativity.
Amy learned how to sew her senior year of high school and what developed was her first passion: designing. Within five years, she had become an award-winning designer and founder of the popular handcrafted t-shirt line Amy Tangerine. Her collections were featured in hundreds of retail outlets, including Bloomingdales, Neiman Marcus and Barneys New York, and yielded impressive worldwide sales.
Click HERE to download this amazing quote created by Amy Tangerine for the podcast!
In 2007, her business expanded to include scrapbooking, with her fashion design work now being produced on a custom basis. She has an incredible signature scrapbook line with American Crafts and she is a scrapbooking guru (seriously have you seen her stuff?! That is some major skills right there!!)
Her love for sharing her designs, creativity, and joy through her clothing, paper crafts, creative collaborations - ranging from custom scrapbooks to celebrity events - and consulting with her clients, has taken Amy all over the globe and it's given her the opportunity to meet and connect with so many amazing people. She's taught creative classes and workshops on every continent (except Antarctica - that would be WAY too cold let's be real), and her online classes and YouTube videos have inspired thousands.
We really cover SO much during this week's new episode. Amy's energy is infectious and I had the best time chatting with her for the podcast. I loved every aspect of this conversation, and it was so wonderful to explore the connection between creativity and its ability to help you craft the life you love and the life you want to have. Every experience we have is an opportunity to explore our creativity and our joy.
I was really curious to ask Amy how she's able to connect to her creativity daily and get her creative juices flowing and I LOVED what she shared. Creativity comes in many shapes and forms, and sometimes you just need to take pause to actually get those ideas flowing.
Don't be afraid to stop and rest, move into using a different medium, and free yourself from any the pressure of any deadlines.
“Inspiration is all around us if we’re willing to look for it.”
For many of us, crafting a positive mindset requires us to change our inner dialogue (um been there, am there!)
There are so many different ways that we can create a positive mindset through crafting and getting in touch with our creative energy. Our creativity gives us an opportunity to express ourselves, and for Amy her creativity is the outlet that has allowed her to find a form of clarity in herself.
A key in crafting that mindset for ourselves is taking stock of how we want to feel in any given moment. The minute you create and live your life based on how you want to feel, everything changes. I loved hearing Amy reflect on this, and the ways in which a morning routine and gratitude practice have truly transformed her life and grounded her.
Changing our thoughts is such a powerful thing, but it's something we have to work on all the time. As Amy shares in this week's new episode, remaining in a positive mindset is something that she has to work on daily. In many ways her internal compass is to be afraid of things, fearful of the unknown, and it's taken work and practice to consistently shift that for herself.
“I realized that everything is a choice, and I can choose how I want to feel at any given moment.”
Amy also shared why it's so important to make sure that we doing something every single day that feeds our soul. Any form of self-expression and creativity has really helped Amy through the hard times, and carving out time for herself every day has been critical. It can be as simple as spending 10-15 minutes doing what you love. The first step is identifying what your soul craves, and as Amy shared, if you take a look at what you're doing and what makes you feel good and like you, those things will actually inspire you to take action and create more of what you love.
Image provided by AVERY
Amy just debuted a really EXCITING collaboration with AVERY! This is the first collaboration collection introduced by Avery Products and it was created for students, moms, women and pretty much anyone wanting fun, creative, inspiring supplies to help organize their projects and lives. Plus it's only available on Amazon!!
Included in this collection are a fun set of binders, dividers, and folders with Amy's designs on them. From Hatchmark Hearts and Rainbow Vibes - there's something for everyone.
Amy really wanted to create something that would put a smile on someone's face and make them feel more creative when they use them. Plus, her positive, hand-painted messages that are on these fun products will undoubtedly leave you feeling inspired.
I LOVE these products and I've been using them at my home office for the last couple of weeks. They are so fun and colorful and totally brighten my day every time I use them.
I can't wait for you guys to get your hands on this colorful and playful collection that continues to brighten up my day - SO we're doing a GIVEAWAY!! (*internally screams with excitement!) Make sure to head over to our Instagram page to enter!!
Image provided by Amy Tangerine
PLUS!! AVERY and Amy are offering 15% off of this incredible collection on Amazon.com with the code "15AVERYNAMY"
To learn more about Amy check out her website www.amytangerine.com
You can find Amy on Instagram @amytangerine and Facebook @amytangerine and on YouTube and Pinterest @amytangerine
Until next week, ✨ #SeekTheJoy - hit SUBSCRIBE - and it would mean so much if you could give the podcast a rating and/or review on iTunes ✨💛🎧
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If you rate/review the podcast on iTunes make sure to e-mail us a screenshot of your review to sydney@seekthejoypodcast.com and as a token of my appreciation and gratitude for your love and support, I'll send you my NEW #SeekTheJoy Guide for Infusing More Joy into Your Life document! I've created this guide based on what I've learned from these #SeekTheJoy conversations. Along with this guide, you'll also receive two limited edition Seek The Joy Podcast stickers which I will mail out to you!
The eighth episode in our series, The Power of Storytelling, airs on August 21st! We want you to be part of it! To learn more and to submit your story, visit the Share Your Story section of our website. Fill out our interest form - and we'll get back to you ASAP.
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