Art has always been a part of my life! Drawing, painting, sculpture, bead making, crafting, etc., I love it all. I have been in graphic design and web design for over a decade. Though I’ve loved this field of work, when 2020 came around, I started to reevaluate what it meant to do art for myself instead of just for my clients. I work from home, and that summer, I was in my usual routine of creating a fun summer schedule for my daughters. It was a 2-month schedule filled with educational activities, fun exercises for kids, science experiments, baking, and arts and crafts. I shared the schedule with one of my closest friends. She strongly encouraged me to package all the arts and crafts ideas and materials into a box and sell them to non artistically inclined moms. I let that idea simmer in my head for about a month and prayed on it until I finally thought, you know what, this is a great idea! I wanted to create a box to encourage children, invite more family time, and prompt conversations about their art.
Ao & Tauri is named after my daughters, Aowyn and Tauriel, who were the artistic inspiration for this company. I love creating art projects for them and seeing how their little minds work at expressing themselves. There’s nothing more exciting to me than when one of my daughters comes up to me and starts explaining what she has drawn or created. The excitement and satisfaction they share are what I want other parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles to experience with gifting this box.
My box features my cartooned daughters having fun throughout the activity booklet provided. There is a definite need to show black children a product as fun as crafts, with faces that look like theirs.
