I'm so excited to introduce to you Louana! She makes THE cutest creatures!
My name is Louana and I’m 29 years old. I live in Japan but I’m originally from the Netherlands. I’ve also lived in Belgium and Atlanta, GA and this summer I’m moving to San Francisco, CA!!
Right now, I’m a full time English teacher at a private English school in Osaka, where I sometimes get to teach a sewing class for special occasions. Most recently, I taught my students how to sew hearts and kisses for Valentine’s, that was really fun. In my free time, I spend time sightseeing and relaxing with my boyfriend Yasu, and I sew as many little eleventh monkey creatures as I can.
I have a lot of hobbies. I love taking pictures and saving memories, love going to concerts, love reading, love blogging, love traveling, love watching movies.
But now my biggest hobby is ‘eleventh monkey’. I’ve always enjoyed being creative, but it took me a while to find a craft that really suited me. I finally got inspired to make little felt creatures during a trip to a creative neighborhood in Seoul last year, and ever since then I’ve been obsessed!
I’m also obsessed with the United States, since I can remember. I think because I watched to many exciting American movies and TV shows as a little girl. My dream goal is to run my own little creative shop, while raising a family with my Japanese man, in America. So naturally, I’m very excited about our big move to San Francisco in a few months!
What inspires you most?
Things I see around me, advertisements, cartoon images, materials for sale in craft stores, blogs, people’s accessories, colorful displays in shop windows and so on. I’m always taking pictures with my iPhone to remember all the inspiring things I’ve seen. I have a million ideas swimming around in my head and drawn in my sketchbook. I really hope I’ll have more time in the future so that I can bring all these ideas to life!
What are your top 5 fave blogs/sites?
This woman is amazing, she is a human lie detector and her evaluation of criminal cases and its suspects are fascinating. She also once read my face from a few pictures and made dozens of correct statements about my personality that just astonished me!
I love taking pictures, and saving all my memories in one place on the web. Flickr is really great for that.
I’m really bad at keeping in touch via email, it takes so much time and I procrastinate too much. On Facebook I can easily keep in touch with friends from all over the world at the same time! I love it!
I don’t watch Japanese TV because I don’t understand Japanese. So I often watch Youtube videos when I’m sewing or cleaning.
Elsie Flanagan is so inspiring. I dream of one day being as successful as her and to have my own brick and mortar shop to display and sell my creations and more.
Where can we find more of you?
What are you current projects?
Right now, most of my time is spent on preparing for our move to San Francisco. There are so many things to organize, think of and do, it’s a little overwhelming. But it’s all worth it, it just doesn’t leave much time for me to sew.
So for now, decisions on which animals to create are inspired by people around me, like departing friends and coworkers, marrying couples and birthdays. I try to find out their favorite animals, start sketching and designing and then I sew them a handmade gift.
And if I have time I sew a second one to put in my Etsy shop. One little animal takes me on average 6 hours to hand sew, and I work a full time job here in Japan, so I’m not very productive right now. But things will change after moving to America this summer. I have so many ideas, sometimes it feels like my head is on overload. I can’t wait to start working on them!
I hope you all enjoyed getting to know Louana as much as I did! Now go check out her shop!
