My regular day to day activity: loving up these two wildly rambunctious pups, Millie & Fig!

Hey friend, thanks for stopping by!

I’m Tracy, the one woman show behind Yellow House Studio, my small handmade biz that I run out of my “home office” in beautiful Northern Ontario. “Home office” is in quotations because it’s truly a chilly corner of my unfinished basement which I lovingly refer to as the Crafting Dungeon. Truth time: the image above is actually my daughter’s bedroom converted into a makeshift studio for photo purposes only. Someday I’ll show off my fabulously dark dungeon studio!

In short, I am a wifey to my drummer/carpenter hubs, mom of two, multi-passionate maker and potty mouthed daydreamer. I’m never far from my two pups (Millie & Fig) and dream of jogging my white tennis shoes to glory in dog agility competitions.

For well over 10 years I’ve been dipping my toes into the creative industry in various forms. From a hilariously bad attempt at doing custom charcoal portraits (hey Tennille, Who’s that Girls?) to an equally awful attempt at wedding photography and then an even worse attempt at greeting card design (Greetings Baker, barf lol). There were a lot of small starts and big stops because I never felt like what I was doing was “me”.

It was during altogether too much school (A BFA in Visual Art and another Bachelors degree in Design) that I finally worked on a project that clicked. With my husband, then boyfriend, we made what was to become our first self published children’s book. It started as a project during my design degree’s book design course that I ended up illustrating The Awful Alphabet. We didn’t intend for it to go any further past the class but it was so much fun that we wanted to share it with our community.

After a successful Indiegogo campaign, we brought The Awful Alphabet to life! The feedback was so amazing and to this day we’re so so proud of our book. From there, I started doing doing more markets, with our book and some digital art prints under the name ‘Tracylouwho’, a nickname I got from a friend in college. I never considered being a “maker” and doing markets as something that I could do as a career so I always kept it as a side gig while I worked at a design studio and taught at my old college.

Over the course of a few years things started to shift and I had to spend more and more time on my side gig and less and less time on my day jobs. Now with an added baby (yay!), starting Makers North Collective with my gal Julieanne and now a suddenly very ill mother, I had to step away from teaching and design to spend more time with my mom and kiddo. I still picked away at my business but it was on the back burner to a certain degree while life took over.

Less than 6 months after getting a cervical cancer diagnosis, my 56 year old mom passed away. Even down to the last moment with her we didn’t fully understand how final it was going to be and how big of a hole she would leave in our family. She was a force to be reckoned with who had an endless supply of enthusiasm for her family and was generally the bringer of fun and whimsy. She always went the extra mile and while sometimes it drove us kids nuts, we nonetheless loved her insane sense of humour and endless pranks.

It was then that I knew I had to invest my time in what truly brought me joy. I decided to dedicate myself to making my creative side biz a full time gig and dedicated the name to my mom. She gave me unwavering support no matter what new insane idea I had and bragged proudly when my art was terrible. My first art show was even in her salon, The Beauty Cafe.

The name Yellow House is in honour of the home she made for us inside a small house bedecked with faded yellow siding. It was where she grew up and where we came to live for a good part of my life as well. It was where she guided us through all of the drama that three teenage girls and one boy could throw at her with so much love and of course, a few yelling matches.

Through everything, I learned that the only thing more precious than time is how we spend it. I now choose to spend my time doing what I love with people that I adore. From being with my family, to working with our amazing creative community and sharing my work with the fabulous people who support it.

I chose Yellow House as my brand as a reminder and a token of thanks to my incredible and very missed “Mama T”, Kim. 💛