For this Meet the
Maker, I sat down with Brie Holst from Life’s Gems. We met for breakfast at Morning Day Café in
Liberty and got to know each other.
Reflecting on our conversation and prepping to write this, two words
stood out to me: Creativity and Passion.
Brie has lived in KC
since she was about 9 years old. Her
earliest years here were spent in Parkville (she has the coolest stories about
her adventures while living on the Park University campus) and now resides in
Liberty with her husband. She has become
a passionate supporter of all things local.
You can find her dining at Rock and Run, grabbing coffee at Morning Day
and helping out with local groups like Handmade in KC and KC Ballet Barre, an
organization that does fun events to help draw interest for the Kansas City Ballet. Their Facebook page is www.facebook.com/barrekc - you should check it out!
Creativity has always
been an important part of Brie’s life; she even considered attending the Art
Institute after high school, but in the end, she pursued her education as a
Physical Therapy assistant. While it may
seem like a big jump, hearing her describe the beauty of the human body and the
creativity used to develop therapy plans for her patients, you can see the art
in this career choice as well.
Brie started her
business the way that many of us crafters do…She made a garter from vintage
materials for a friend and that led to her selling gorgeous veils, facinators,
and other wedding related items at shops like Bottoms Up and The Lace Loft in
the West Bottoms. While she had success
with the bridal market, and was even featured on Beauty & Lifestyle Bride
and The Knot, Brie had so many more ideas and directions she wanted to go. Her passion for creating was being limited by
designing exclusively for weddings. So,
Vintage Wedding Gems became Life’s Gems: Dazzling Designs for Home &
Life. She now focuses on creating
eco-friendly products, repurposing discarded items like vintage sheets and
donated clothing and turning them into new and useful items for the home. The amazing amount of creativity it takes to
look at used, old materials and turn them in to beautiful new and functional
pieces is just unbelievable. Life’s Gems
carries a wide array of products from organizing bin, hot/cold packs,
chalkboard art, tags, and pretty much whatever Brie can think of!
Since she is truly an
artist at heart, I had to ask Brie about her process for creating one of my
favorites of her projects - skeleton bones!
I was amazed to hear how she used different materials and methods to
create the look of realistic muscles from plain old fake bones from the craft
store!
Want to see more of
Brie’s work? She is a featured trunk
show artist at Ugly Glass & Co. June First Friday Weekend (Friday 9am-7pm, Saturday 9am-6pm, Sunday 11am-4pm). Ugly Glass & Co is located on the 4th Floor of the Fou Flea in the Historic West Bottoms of Kansas City. You can also find Life's Gems online!
Website -
lifesgems.net
Storenvy - http://lifesgems.storenvy.com/
Instagram - lifes_gems
A special Thank You to Laura from Handmade by Lolo Z, Clothing & Gifts for writing this Meet the Maker article about Handmade in KC member Brie from Life's Gems.
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