About Dear Handmade Life
Dear Handmade Life founders, Delilah Snell and Nicole Stevenson have a passion for empowering creatives with education and a forum to help people make a living doing what they love.
For nearly a decade, the aunt-and-niece team has been producing Patchwork Show: Modern Makers Festival, a biannual multi-city fair showcasing local emerging artists, crafters and designers alongside artisan food, DIY craft workshops, gourmet food trucks and indie music. In 2012 they founded Craftcation: Business + Makers Conference, featuring industry professionals leading attendees in hands-on food & craft workshops and lectures and panels on creative business. Delilah and Nicole also share DIY craft projects, tips on creative entrepreneurship, recipes, their adventures and inspiration to make every day awesome on their blog.
ABOUT DELILAH
Delilah Snell is a workshop instructor, lecturer on environmental education, food sustainability, and small businesses, and the co-founder of Patchwork Show and Craftcation Conference. A former master food preserver, she first achieved prominence with her award-winning eco-boutique/sustainable workshop & lecture space, The Road Less Traveled Store, which she ran for eight years.
She’s appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Orange County Register, NPR’s Marketplace, and is a frequent guest on Southern California news outlets. She currently consults on event production, small-scale food business, food crafting and is an active voice in her community of Santa Ana, California.
When Delilah’s not tooling around town in her 1968 VW bus, you can find her at home working in her garden, cooking or snuggling on the couch with her dog Marge and husband Gustavo.
“I’ve always wanted to inspire fellow business people to take that chance and just do it!” -Delilah Snell
ABOUT NICOLE
Nicole Stevenson is a writer, illustrator, maker, teacher and creative business consultant. Her path includes time as a street artist on the Venice Beach boardwalk, costume designer, DIY workshop instructor, co-founder of a non-profit that produced art shows benefiting charities, owner and designer of Random Nicole (an art-inspired clothing line carried at over 250 locations) and owner of craft workshop studio and retail store: The Craft Kitchen. She has a BA and MA in creative writing and is currently working on a non-fiction book about her crafty adventures. She’s also the founder of Show and Tell Design Studio, a boutique design studio that creates illustrations, branding and logos, editorial design and custom invitations.
When she’s not working, you may find her breaking up scuffles between her dog and three chickens, couch crafting while watching a film she’s seen too many times to count, playing guitar with her husband, sitting in her backyard with good friends and a margarita while playing Cards vs. Humanity or squeezing in time for a quick trip to a lovely place where people are scarce and trees are not.
“Craft can make the world a better place… the feeling one gets from making something with their own hands is beyond empowering.” -Nicole Stevenson