About

A web designer, art director, content marketer, digital strategist, entrepreneur, e-commerce specialist, agency owner who doesn’t like labels.

I almost cut and pasted my Linkedin bio here but decided that I would rather write a few things about myself in my own words. I run a digital agency in Toronto with my husband. In June, it will be 8 years since we started. Certainly been a lot of ups and downs along the way, but it’s definitely been worth the ride. I’ve always had a bit of a hard time coming up with a simple answer when people ask me what I do. I’d say that I’ve had the creative juices pumping through me since I was small. In school, I’d spend more time on the title page than the assignment. I remember that because a teacher actually said that to me. In English class, instead of writing an essay on Shakespeare, I performed a Lady MacBeth monologue for my class. I loved theatre. The skills I learned in improv class have served me well in professional situations when a presentation didn’t work or I was forced to think in the moment.

Growing up my friends had posters of Hanson or JTT on the wall. They were boy crazy. I was busy collecting all of the magazine ads from the Got Milk campaign and hanging those on my wall. The mix of pop culture, marketing, design and people were always going through my head.

In grade 5 my best friend and I set up a membership club in our class room. It was the Archie Club. Our business model was phenomenal. We took everyone’s Archie comic books to create a library and then charged a membership fee for access to the library and so we could go buy more books. Our teacher just gave up telling us to take it down. I’d sketch out dresses and send the paper around the room for my class to vote which is the best look. When I think about grade 5, I remember learning about the weather and vikings. That’s about it.

In middle school, I got a baby blue dress to wear to the school dance (as you do). I went looking at the mall for a fancy baby blue purse to match and could not find one. I cut off the bottom of my dress and hemmed it up to be shorter. I used the fabric to make my own purse – that obviously matched perfectly. I had friends asking me to make one for them too. Cute as a Button was born. I knew that school dances weren’t very often so I decided to get into casual purses. I’d go to a used clothing store and buy large sized clothes in cute patterns. Tried to keep my purchases to $1 for a shirt. From each shirt, I could make 4-5 purses. I’d sell them for around $20 each. It was a pretty good business. I had a Cute as a Button stamp and also found some Cute as a Button ribbon at a craft store and bought them out.

to be continued…