Petaluma’s DIY queen explores new chapter

Craft blogger Cathe Holden, the driving force behind the popular blog “Just Something I Made,” focuses on a new style and her local art community.|

Petaluman Cathe Holden has spent years dreaming up hundreds of handmade creations to share with others on her popular craft blog, but now the homegrown DIY queen is ready to focus her efforts on a new passion.

The graphic designer turned craft blogger who’s the mastermind behind the blog “Just Something I Made,” has gained a loyal following during her eight years of sharing her wealth of crafting knowledge though online posts and workshops.

From her “Inspired Barn,” a 1,000-square-foot crafter’s metropolis at her Petaluma home, she’s showcased step-by-step directions for creating complex crafts that range from a cigar box bed with a postage stamp quilt to jewelry to advent calendars, with her blog drawing 10,000 page views a day at its highpoint.

Now, the 50-year-old Missouri native is taking a step back and shifting her focus to a new realm: creating assemblage art, or three-dimensional artworks made using everyday objects, which she sells through Etsy and her website.

She’s also networking in the Petaluma art community, and last week she set up a mercantile in a downtown collective and consignment shop “The Find Petaluma,” incorporating the color scheme from her home studio and offering some of the vintage crafting components and goods for home decor from her studio, as well as completed crafts she’s made.

“This year is a transition for me - not completely out of crafting, but sort of into an art realm,” Holden said, adding that she plans to still work blogging and teaching into her creative lifestyle.

Building on her graphic design and marketing background, Holden’s crafting success started in 2008 after the mother of three tapped into a like-minded online community.

“I thought ‘there are a lot of people like me with kids who are creative,’?” said Holden, who’s the wife of Petaluma Fire Department Battalion Chief Jeff Holden. “I was starting to branch out to see the community primarily because of Etsy, and I thought ‘you know people might be interested to see how a graphic designer crafts.’?”

From there, things took off.

The SC Johnson Company, manufacturer of household cleaning supplies, sought out Holden for its “Family Economics” blog shortly after she’d launched her website, and she was commissioned by Chronicle Books to publish a book about paper crafts titled “Rosette Art.” She was asked to become a contributing editor for Country Living Magazine.

Her operation outgrew her home workspace and with help from corporate sponsors, including Lowe’s, which provided the paint and rugs and Overstock.com, which gave lamps and chairs, she turned the barn that once housed her husband’s fishing boat into her highly-organized studio, which she’s meticulously stocked with supplies from flea markets, antique shops, Etsy and EBay.

It was during research to find new techniques for future crafts that she discovered the world of assemblage art, and right away, she was hooked.

“Assemblage work is the perfect combination of graphic design and my passion for vintage goods and crafting, and it just all came together,” she said.

She began to create intricate pieces in vintage wooden boxes and containers, using components including antique labels, cigar boxes, figurines and other objects she’s amassed in her collection over the years.

“I find the centerpiece - some little item - and I love to build a story around that,” she said. “I dig through all boxes of stuff and things come together. All the different components and boxes and trinkets and things build around that small centerpiece.”

And, in keeping with her past successes, her work was noticed quickly, with renowned illustrator and graphic artist Mary Engelbreit purchasing her first assemblage art piece, she said.

Holden said her newfound passion allows her to explore more of her own creativity while immersing herself in the local art community.

“I feel like it’s the right mix. I love Petaluma and I love being in town, it gets me out of the barn,” she said. “It all just kind of came to this with all the different things I do. I don’t want to give up teaching, and I’m finding a way to fit teaching into what I’m doing. I’m finding myself as an artist and not as much as a commercial being – I’ve always had a commercial aspect to my work.”

She ended her contract with SC Johnson about two months ago, and she said she’s enjoying the newest chapter to her story.

“I feel like I don’t answer to anyone and it flows so much more creatively through me,” she said. “I design on a whim and there’s no need to explain every step I’ve taken … it’s not even that I got tired of any of those things, I’m just exploring new things, and I’m really enjoying doing my own art and the fact that it’s actually selling.”

(Contact Hannah Beausang at hannah.beausang@arguscourier.com.)

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