Playing Shop:

I can proudly say that I have been hijacking my mom’s orange handled scissors since I was eight years old. She kept them hung up high where we children couldn't reach them and they would stare down at me from the wall they hung on, glistening with all their sharpness. She kept it with the other things that stayed out of our reach, like the tiny pen shaped screwdriver, bills that needed attention, and other things we weren’t allowed to touch. She made it known to us that these were her good scissors and we couldn’t use them without her permission. Whenever we did activities, we got the blunt tipped, rounded scissors that could barely cut paper, they were a bright blue, fashioned in plastic and had to be held at a certain angle for any sort of cutting power. When we got older, we were allowed to use an old pair of semi rusted black handled metal cutting shears. And then finally, one summer, we got permission to use those orange handled scissors.

It was summer vacation and I had completed the third grade. It was time for sleeping in, day long cartoons, reading and coloring books, and running around outside picking petals off from my grandma’s rose bushes. One day, my younger sister and I had a brilliant idea that we would create a store and we decided to name it “The Buzy Bee Company.” We set to work right away. We started off by cutting up our entire reserve of construction, lined and blank paper to make stationary notepads and stickers and we cut up old socks to make stuffed dolls and even made iron on patches! (I had discovered the magic of fusible webbing that summer). We confiscated all of my mom’s supplies that she kept neatly away in the craft drawer which infuriated my older brother, since we exhausted the entire supply of tape, paper, glue, staples and pretty much every colored marker in the house. And so we created an endless supply of products that we essentially “sold” to one another. We even got into the kitchen supply drawer of sandwich baggies, which we cut into halves and stapled together with hand drawn paper headers onto our custom made poly bags, and as we finished packaging each and every item that we made, we smiled with admiration. We finally completed our displays and our store was ready for “shopping.”

We took turns trading with each other and this is how we spent a good amount of our summer vacation. Little did I know that this brilliant idea we came up with when I was eight years old would become the blueprint of my creative happiness. When school started in the fall, I took my leftover summer creations along with me and offered them for sale to my classmates and friends during recess and lunchtime. My little patches, notepads and bracelets brought everyone so much excitement and joy and in return, filled my heart in such a way that fueled and encouraged me to keep creating. I had become a mini entrepreneur in the fourth grade and had saved up enough money to venture into my latest interest that year, t-shirts and jewelry.

I was so excited that I had saved up enough money to buy a set of inkjet heat transfers from an office supply store that had caught my curiosity. I was obsessed with the idea of being able to have my favorite images printed onto a T-shirt. I didn’t know exactly how I would print the images, but soon enough, I found an opportunity to tag along with my dad to the Xerox copy center when he had to make copies of some important paperwork. So I brought along my blank sheets of transfer paper and a few pages of anime graphics and stickers that I wanted to have printed. We must have spent an hour there, trying to convince the Xerox guy to feed our transfer paper into the colored copy machine. Sure enough, he agreed and I watched impatiently as my sailor moon and dinosaur sticker images rolled out from the giant white copying machine. I must have been the happiest little nine year old that day. When we came home, I asked to use my mom’s sharpest scissors to cut out my transfers and she agreed to help me with the ironing part as well. I had made my first custom T-shirt and I couldn’t be any prouder! Now I had new offerings to my classmates.

My little side business at school was ongoing for the next three years, selling candy, friendship bracelets, hair clips, and even kool aid packets, which for some reason was all the craze at the time.

When I turned twelve, we finally got our first desktop computer and discovered Corel draw, which took my hustle to the next level. I created my first catalog flyer with printed text and hand drawn products for sale, which consisted of mini nail polish baskets, t-shirts and sticker packs. I was pretty thrilled with my expanded product line and kept selling throughout middle school.

Then my hobby turned side hustle, came to a hiatus when we were evicted from our home as we discovered our house had unknowingly been sold. One day after school we came home to find a white piece of paper taped to our door. By then, I was old enough to understand what was going on and I remember both my parents scrambling to find housing and we ended up in a low income apartment and had to give up our three beloved huskies. It was definitely an adjustment for myself and my two siblings and as all of this was going on, I became more focused on my education and spent less time dedicated to my craft. The workload at school became more and more intense and consumed more of my time, yet I couldn't help but have my creative outbursts which soon started to implement itself into my personal wardrobe. I started customizing and embellishing my own clothing that I wore to school.

As I entered my freshman year of high school, my mom started teaching me how to use her sewing machine and I really enjoyed the process. She would take us to Joann’s and I would marvel through the pattern books, hoping that one day I would be able to make my own jackets and dresses, too. Soon, I started collecting secondhand doll patterns, and thrifted dresses and skirts that I would disassemble to understand how they were sewn together. I started creating my own patterns this way, mixing and matching fabrics, adding rhinestones, sequin appliqués, glitter and puffy paint. I would show up at school in my customized outfits with coordinating homemade jewelry and loved all the compliments I received from my friends. This lasted throughout high school and then I landed my first real job at the mall, designing with rhinestones. I was sixteen and had become so good at it that I was requested to design jackets for the Latin Grammy Awards and was even paid to design someone’s prom dress.

I worked there for two years until it was time to enroll in college and I ended up applying to a Cal state to get my general education. At this point, I didn’t know I wanted to pursue fashion. I knew I wanted to learn about business, so I took a bunch of admin, accounting, math and economics classes, which totally bored my brain. I was hungry for art, for imagination, for creation. And so I transferred into a liberal arts college and fell in love with all my silk screening, sculpture and arts courses. I was probably the only student there on financial aid, loans and grants. Everyone seemed privileged and I definitely stuck out. I remember meeting a kid whose great great grandfather invented the straw and another who was the heir to a luggage empire. I felt like an outcast, especially being a transfer student and not really having any friends. Nobody knew who I was, I was just a transplant that popped in after everyone else had spent the last two years together making memories and recounting inside jokes. It was a rough year and I still could not find my tribe of people. I mean I had acquaintances that I would go on ventures with outside of the campus and into the streets, but I had a deep checklist of what a real friend was. Lucky for me, on one of these outings I did meet a friend, my best friend.

We were both wearing personalized clothing that we had each customized. He had on a T-shirt with a print of a painted girl in pastels and hearts that kind of resembled me in a way and I was wearing a jacket with cut out heart appliqués in all different materials that I hand stitched all over. Our meeting was total synchronicity. We spent every other day together going to art shows, thrift stores, sneaking into underground concerts and soon it was summer vacation yet again and I never returned to school. We moved to Hollywood and started a whirlwind life of music, art and fashion. We combined our super powers of creativity and launched into the recession with the genius idea of creating a makeshift performance and retail space, which to this day, has transformed into a fashion and art brand that specializes in customized clothing. Again, my eight year old self lit up with the idea of playing shop and so we named it, “Freak City.”

And so this wild ride of becoming young adults and artists swept us away into the many obstacles called life. It was a painstaking period of growth and frustration. I had dropped out of college in the pursuit of happiness and to experience real life. Having odd jobs in design sucked away all my energy and the only thing I looked forward to at the end of everyday, was scraping together thrifted dresses, painting shirts and idling away at my desk late into the night creating jewelry. I was becoming exhausted by my nine to five and then working five in the evening into the early morning hours operating our space. Then one day I decided to quit working for other people. I didn’t get the satisfaction from their grind over my own, so I took a huge risk and got on that roller coaster of highs and lows, of feast and famine, defeat and triumph. So many days I felt like I made the wrong choice and felt as though I failed, it was as if all the odds were truly against us and the struggle became very real. At times, we didn’t know where our next dollar was coming from and at the lowest point during this journey, I had negative two cents in my checking account. It has been the most emotional process in all my life because pouring your heart into your creativity becomes this vessel for your soul and it becomes so insanely personal since it is streamlined into everything you do. And although I was happier than before, with it came hurt, loss and sacrifice, but also the deepest, truest, rawest form of happiness that I have ever experienced.

What started out with those beloved orange handled scissors that hung high up on the wall, has become an everyday part of my creative happiness that not only brings me joy through every season, every trial, triumph, tragedy and celebration, but has become my livelihood. I’ve exchanged cutting those tiny notepads, stickers and transfers, for pattern paper, paint brushes and fabric. This creative freedom is my true happiness.