How art changed our whole lives

In 2014, we were stuck, trapped with nowhere to go, no money in our pockets and absolutely no direction. My husband and I, and a 6-month-old facing homelessness and joblessness after he exited The United States Marine Corps with an honorable discharge.

We sold all of our belongings and bought a truck, packed it up with all of our necessities, and drove 19 hours to his Father's trailer where he had a job working 16-hour shifts at a factory making car parts in Michigan. We were miserable. He worked until his body basically gave out and I was a stay-at-home mom for the first time ever...with zero direction, PPD, and no aspiration. I was spinning my wheels.

We bounced around for a while trying to figure out how to pay our bills and tried every direction we could. We scraped up enough money to go home (Colorado) and get a tiny apartment. I started teaching art classes out of our dining room.

I had no formal training but I was able to teach up to 4 people at once. $10 per person... It was a start but it wasn't paying the bills. We painted with acrylics on canvas and I faked it until I made it. Little did I know, this was going to someday blossom into a full-blown LLC.

Fast forward 4 years later. I was teaching at every venue I could scrape up. Birthday parties, funeral homes (yes you read that right,) bachelorette, ladies' night, painting in the park. We had a mobile art studio - in homes, churches, schools anywhere. I was art hungry and I was starting to become established through word of mouth and breaking my back trying to advertise everywhere I could possibly think of.

We started branching out into making sock gnomes for some clients who wanted something a little different. We had to learn how to sew, cut fabric (apparently decent fabric scissors are a must for this? I had no idea??) and put them together, and make it easy for someone with zero artistic or craft knowledge to be able to crank them out without getting too frustrated. They went over really well, we started doing "Gnomie parties" and it saved us.

Then covid hit and we sat here for weeks trying to figure out how to move our business forward. I literally cried every day. Everything we had worked so hard to build... Stopped. All of our ticket sales had to be refunded. 52 Seats at local breweries and bars for painting and "maker parties"...gone. Thousands of dollars in refunds and credits. It was our full-time moneymaker and now we were at a dead stop. We put together ''gnomie'' kits, painting kits, wood kits...everything we could think of to save our business and did no-contact deliveries to doorsteps across Colorado for people to log into Zoom with us and make while in isolation. We even started selling our supplies just to make ends meet with no idea of how we would have enough to recoup and start-up painting and making again...with the thoughts in the back of our minds that if we didn't make it through, it would be less to liquidate if we lost it all and had to move forward.

For 4 months we couldn't continue with our mobile business because everything was shut down, everyone was sick or in quarantine and no one wanted anyone new to enter their space in case they were positive with Corona. I get it, but bills don't pay themselves and our whole business is all about face-to-face, social interactions. It kicked us into a gear that we didn't even know we had. We went from normal life to whatever this was and we were always just hoping it would work with no backup plan in place at all because none of us have ever had to experience this before.

It's now 2021 and we are still going strong. Somehow we made it through government shutdowns TWICE. We are looking at opening our brick and mortar location within the next few weeks and I am psyched but scared. Will we make it through all of the odds? Will this finally be a thing? We have tried so hard for so many years.

Winning this would mean the world to us, and would go directly towards opening our very first location, and we may finally be able to make our dreams come true...all because of art.

Feel free to check us out! We're on Instagram and Facebook @719IArted. We'd love to have you "stop" by!