All items by Clevertree Mindful Creations

Mindfully Created items from previously-unloved materials

What inspires you?

I find inspiration in Nature and architecture, I love to design, visualise, and then create. Re-imagining, visualising, turning unloved in to loved, and creating something from nothing. The thought of taking a piece of wood that is rough and unloved and turning it back in to something almost a beautiful as the original tree it came from is a real buzz for me and triggers my creative nature in to high gear.

How did you start?

As a young boy I would often be found with pencil and paper in hand designing something I had imagined or envisioned, designing to make it a reality, designing so that one day I could build it with my own hands and more importantly offer it to others.

I have always loved to design and imagine possibilities which led me to work in the I.T industry designing and building websites and applications and more recently as a hands-on operations manager which incorporates many of my skills in a complementary fashion.

I have been fortunate enough to secure my current day job as a well-paid 3 day a week contract with a former employer that supports me in my desire to build my craft business and turn it in to something more than a hobby.

Where do you work?

For the last 9 or so years I have been developing the outside space at the home I share with my wonderful (very tolerant) partner and our cat, not only to have a beautiful garden but to also build my own workshop. Our house is not huge so I could not take over any of the rooms as a workshop and certainly not inside the house with so much sawdust created. The only solution was to build from scratch outside.

In 2020 I finally finished building the garden and my workshop and began the long journey to kit it out. Im still developing the space but as many other makers will tell you, a crafter’s workshop never stops evolving.

What do you make?

I create beautiful products from discarded materials, mainly wood, that has been previously used for packaging or transportation purposes that would otherwise be discarded after one or two uses.

Each piece is hand crafted and as unique as you or I. No two pieces are the same and
retaining as many of the original characteristics of the original piece of material as possible is key to telling the origin story of each finished piece.

One of my favourite things to do is incorporate other complimentary materials such as quartz crystal and copper plate.

My love for working with wood stems from watching my father work as a piano tuner, technician, and restoration specialist. I would watch him for hours in his workshop sympathetically restoring not only the mechanics of a piano but the aesthetics too and as a young boy I learnt a lot, I also caught the bug for woodworking and artistry! Since then, i have always had a need to work with my hands and develop my skills at any opportunity and at the end of 2023 I finally took the plunge, went part-time, and setup Clevertree Mindful Creations.