Hello Creative QB’s,

2 minute read

This is my first post under the pen-ship of a new Creative Queen Bees.

A big hearted warm welcome to you.

I’m Amanda, founder and Creative Director at Creative Queen Bees. I’m an artist, designer and author dedicated to connecting women to live a happy, healthy and creative life. (We love blokes too, so boy’s don’t shy away from us).

I believe personal creativity is an essential life-force for creating a sense of wellbeing, love, family, self expression, imagination, adventure, learning, inspiration, insight, fun, fulfilment, self love and transformation. My truest desire is to share my passion for creativity, to inspire, motivate and support you.

I started Creative Queen Bees back in 2012 as a creative services studio specialising in brand strategy, brand design, graphic and web. Within a few years, thanks to some wonderful clients who spread the word, the business was thriving. I started hiring staff, scaling up teams, we won awards, built a team and a great reputation. On the flip side, I made a lot of mistakes, learned many hard lessons, cried a lot, even screamed and doubted myself way too much.

I had many sleepless nights worrying about everything. From having enough cashflow to pay staff and contractors, meeting deadlines (which are often a killer in creative services) and my endless to ‘do list’, not to mention the actual job of being a designer.

In 2017 all that changed when I was diagnosed with a rare form of Ovarian Cancer. While in recovery I put CQB in hiatus. I discovered that running a busy, stressful business that splintered my life was actually not what I wanted at all. In fact during my recovery, I was reminded that back when I started CQB I had a much bigger vision for where I thought she could fly.

During those days of recovery, I would write in my journal, pages and pages of long hand across books of empty lined paper. I’d just write stuff, prose, sketches of my day and after a while I started writing ideas that surfaced from when I first had a vision for CQB’s.

Many journals later, much has changed, my core being has shifted, I’ve pivoted back to my authentic creative self. With it came renewed courage to design a life I loved. I convinced my family to move, we sold the house, packed up everything and moved back to my home town in the Hunter Valley, back to family.

I then asked two of my equally creative sisters (our family is four sisters, 1 brother, 14 grandchildren, spouses and a couple of ex husbands in total) if they would like to join me every now and then to blog about the joy, excitement, challenges and frustrations of balancing our creative lives with the demands of ‘real’ life, family and careers. I told them I wanted to share ways to discover, learn and reconnect with our authentic creative selves on a daily basis and share it with other women. I hope you browse over some of their blog posts and enjoy the insights and different perspectives on living a creative life.

Big ♥ Amanda