About my business name: I wanted to create a word for my business that somehow expressed what I hope for in my creative process - things like productivity and imagination, usefulness and beauty and sweetness. I kept thinking about bees and how they represent things like community cooperation, and work that produces something sweet. I have some Italian heritage as well, my Italian ancestors having been tailors (I also have Scottish ancestors who were tailors!), and I wanted to evoke the inspiration they give me. All too often we dismiss art and beauty as being extras rather than necessities, but without art and beauty, I think we are missing some essential pieces of the human experience. I thought the Italian word for bee, ape (pronounced like "ah-pay"), was also so lovely, and evoked all of those concepts together.

And, my daughter majored in Linguistics at college, minored in Italian, and likes to make constructed languages ("con lang”) that are generated with a free program someone wrote. My daughter gave me a bunch of words from one of her constructed languages to play with for my business name. I ended up really liking her con-lang word for "imagine" , vivriah. Combined, the two words, ape and vivriah became Apevivriah. (And a studio, of course, is an artist's work room!)

About my logo: This LeafPearls design is the first image I made when beginning to experiment with surface design and pattern repeats, and it's still my favorite. I drew it with colored pencils on paper, and one of these days will turn into a proper logo - probably with a bee or two added!

About Me: I am a United States American, Generation X woman, wife, and mother. My children are now early adult and late teen in age, both of them have ADHD (my husband also has ADHD), and Auditory Processing Disorder (I also have Auditory Processing Disorder), and one of them also is Autistic (this also runs in the family). Both of my children are very bright. All of this has hugely influenced their school experience, and thus also my experience as a mother, and especially as a human being. I live in beautiful Longmont, Colorado (Cheyenne, Arapaho, Ute), which is in Boulder County and just East of the Rocky Mountains. Our closest National Park is Rocky Mountain National Park.

I've been an artist since my early years, and studied art or design through high school and college. I've kept my hand in creative pursuits one way or another, through various visual arts, fiber arts, cooking, gardening, and I would even say creative approaches to rearing my children-with-differences through different types of schools in the American school system. Life is a never ending opportunity for continued learning and growth, and I have always dealt with life's ups, downs, curveballs, and delights with an eye towards how I can keep growing and maturing as a person. So it is also with my exploration of sewing and design, which I've decided to record here in this blog. If you've read this far, you are probably already a friend or family member (ha!), or else maybe you're interested in exploring sewing things yourself. Look for me on Instagram, Facebook, and Spoonflower as Apevivriah Studio, and on RedBubble as Apevivriah.

- Juliana