Featured Artisan: Joyful Earth

Joyful Earth is known for her wonderful selection of beautifully artistic, yet perfectly useful unpaper products.  Let's meet Robin, the artisan behind Joyful Earth!

My goal with Joyful Earth is to create sustainable, functional, fun and unique items for your home. From kitchen cloths, to baby and child items, to reusable snack bags, to tea accessories and more. I hope to help my customers find joy in the everyday items used in their homes, while ensuring ecological responsibility in my creations.

How has your business evolved since you first started selling? (What got you started as a WAHM?/How long have you been in business)
I first started selling in 2005 under the name Tush Cloth Diapers. I loved being a diaper sewing WAHM but after my youngest child potty learned, I started to lose interest in diaper making and selling. In the summer of 2009, I took a break from Tush to delve into other reusable products for the home. Joyful Earth was met with immediate enthusiasm from my customer base and I've been growing and evolving the Joyful Earth line of products since then. In fall of 2009, Tush closed permanently as I decided to focus my energy on growing Joyful Earth. 

What is your favorite product to make?
My favorite products to make are the Tea on the Go sets. Inspired by an idea Lisa, of Healing Pixie gave me - I created this product to allow the loose tea lover to have their favorite teas on hand wherever they went. I love shopping for fabrics, mixing fabrics and creating unique pieces for my customers.

You make a lot of green products - what has been your journey into being green? 
I've always been green. I remember way back in high school sitting in a room filled with bags and bags of paper to be sorted and recycled. A group of friends and I had started a "green club" in our school (this was back in 1990 before being green was fashionable) and we took on the massive task of recycling the waste paper in our high school. The paper had to be sorted into colour and white paper, and we'd spend hours chatting and sorting. I'm not sure we ever got through all of the sorting, but the memories are still with me today.
When I had babies, it was natural that I decided to cloth diaper them. We had a disastrous time cloth diapering our eldest because I had not yet discovered the online cloth diapering community. When we had our second, I discovered Hyena Cart and soon after began sewing diapers for my daughter and eventually for sale. The rest is history so to speak.

What does a typical day look like for you? 
A typical day involves a lot of balance! We wake up at about 6am and I brew that essential pot of coffee. As the kids play or watch tv, I check in on my email, facebook and browse the online forums I belong to. Then we eat breakfast and I madly rush to get the eldest two out the door. On a good day, the youngest naps while the middle child is in preschool. I use this time to package orders and do a bit of sewing. Close to lunch we head out to the school to pick up the middle child and then back home for lunch and a bit of housework. My partner comes home at 1:00 and I get busy sewing for the rest of the afternoon. Generally, my husband will do most of the supper prep as I finish up photos and listings. I also have an out of the home job that I go to 2 days per week. Saturday and Sunday are a mix of activities, working out and sewing. It sounds like I am very busy, but really its a nice relaxed routine that we all enjoy! 

What inspires you?
I wish I could say that I am inspired by nature or something more artistic, but it's just every day life that inspires me. The idea for Joyful Earth came while I was shopping for groceries and yet again forgot to bring my reusable grocery bags. I felt that if I had something beautiful and functional, I'd be more inclined to remember to bring them. 


What is your most favorite thing you've ever made? 
Its really hard to narrow this down to just ONE thing. I've created some amazing dye work for diapers and unpaper products and some of tea wallets I've made have been really difficult to part with. If I were to narrow this down to one piece, it would likely have to be the Heather Ross Mendocino mermaids shower curtain hanging in my bathroom! So rarely do I find time to create things for our home, I am especially proud of this piece.

Thank you, Robin, for sharing your world with us!  
Stock up on Joyful Earth's unpaper products for your home at 
http://joyfulearth.etsy.com
http://joyfulearth.ca 


and be sure to join the Joyful Earth fanpage for a change to win a custom mini tea on the go set - you pick fabrics! http://facebook.com/joyfulearth