Creative You: Dale and Jeff from Ocasiocasa

Shock and Awe Glass Art Bottle by Ocasiocasa

Nestled in their creative abode in Florida, Dale and her husband Jeff are a match made in DIY heaven. Absorbing inspiration from everyday objects and materials, they work in tandem to create breathtaking and unexpected treasures.

“Five years from now, I wholeheartedly want to still be doing this – creating our line of artwork. Always creating.” – Dale Ocasio

When creative forces collide: Jeff and I make are makers – your typical, hardline, do-it-yourself people. But, both of us have always been very creative also. By that I mean always dabbling in some form of art, even before we met. I would visit Jeff at work, while we were dating, and he would be making miniature furniture from scrap wood, or trees from copper wire, while on break. I was still in school and learning batik, pottery, weaving, photography, etc, at the time. While our children were really young, I designed, and sold, soft sculptured dolls, handmade paper, and altered books.

We moved to SW Florida and inherited a gorgeous stand of giant bamboo. Using bamboo as a medium arose from the necessity to constantly have to cut it back. Turning the stalks into useful walking staffs became a pastime and the reason our family spent several years as artisans in renaissance festivals. An excess of bamboo wasn’t the only useful material we’ve had to work with … my love for red wine, and Jeff’s for the art of decoupage turned out to be a good match. We never threw the bottles out, and began altering their look and re-using them.

An obstacle is only what you make of it: Wow…well, we still have obstacles, but I look forward to climbing over them. I’d say the hardest part, for me, is delegating time for all the components of running a creative business. It can start to feel overwhelming, but I’m not backing down. In fact, that’s it… I think my biggest obstacle would have to be feeling defeated. And when I feel that start to happen, I practice a combination of detachment and gratitude, simultaneously. Detachment—meaning zooming out to look at the big picture. Zoom out as far as you need to until you can see how trivial the things you’re stressing about really are. And, gratitude is easy; simply start thinking about all the things you are grateful for. Anyone can do this -anyone; it’s simple. My mood brightens, my load feels lighter, and I can get to work on the next biggest obstacle: exposure. We certainly haven’t overcome that one yet, but we work on it everyday – online and locally. It also helps when an extremely helpful blogger asks to feature you on their blog.

Jeff has no obstacles, though. He’s the design spinner and it all just seems to ooze right out of him. I really don’t know where it all comes from. Take his sculptured taping technique; I could learn how to do that, and with loads of practice get just as good at it. But, I would run out of design ideas, and I know they wouldn’t be as original, strange, quirky, cool, etc…I guess it helps that I really love his work. I mean the number one rule, to all of this, would have to be that you’ve got to love what you sell.

As far as obstacles with Etsy – I really can’t imagine them being anymore helpful, especially to newbies. It’s really a lot to take in at first, but it’s all right there for you to read and jump in and involve yourself with.

Home is where the art is: We want to keep it recycled and homegrown. Jeff’s form of art with sculptured tape will start taking on other forms. An example would be some book covers that we are almost ready to put up. I love these. You can leave your book laying around, or holding it in your lap, and no one can see what you’re reading. They’re pretty too, and look like leather. But I would really like to expand into even more products for the home.

Also, I want to make use of my photography, but I’m really not interested in just selling the photos themselves. Instead, I would like to incorporate photography into some of our art. I’m also becoming more interested in digital collage artwork and working on creating my own clipart library from our own photography for it.

Five years from now, I wholeheartedly want to still be doing this – creating our line of artwork. Always creating.

Learn from Dale’s experience as an artisan: That’s one of the reasons behind our blog. I wanted to share the experiences of doing-it-yourself. Even if you aren’t selling your creations, the act of creating the stuff in your surroundings, whether you hang it a wall, place it on a shelf, eat with it, wear it, gift it away…making it yourself, hand, heart and mind, offers the maker tremendous growth and healing. I truly believe that.

Connect and follow the Ocasios: Our blog is at www.ocasiocasa.com where we love to read and respond to anyone’s comments. We can be contacted through our Etsy shop at www.ocasiocasa.etsy.com. We tweet at www.twitter.com/ocasiocasa. And, we have a Facebook fanpage at www.facebook.com/ocasiocasa.