In the Beginning

The very first Awareness design I made was this one......

Samara was only a few months old, and I was still struggling at times to come to terms with her diagnosis. I saw this phrase online, and wanted to do something special with it. So I had a bit of a play around. I'm not an artist, so I had to put my thinking cap on. I could picture what I was after, but wasn't sure what the next step should be.

Then I found a photo I had of 3 of my girls on the way back from the Royal Brisbane and Womens Hospital to Ronald McDonald House. And, totally unlike her mother, there was my daughter in a perfect size 8 pair of jeans!! (size 8 is close to as small as you get in Australian sizing). So with a bit of playing around, and a fair bit of swearing, I managed to trace them using only a very sore finger and the silly mousepad on my laptop! But, I was pleased with the result, and I was starting to turn the corner from sadness into pride!!! And that was what really mattered!

In fact, I had so much fun doing it (well, completing it anyway) that I went on to design some more. Some were based on saying that have become part of the disabled community, and some I came up with on my own. Over the next few days, I got onto a roll and made the following designs.......

Some of these have been uploaded to Cafe Press, and some to www.zazzle.com.au/justjuniors. Each upload takes around an hour to do, so not everything is on both sites!

Recently I decided to start selling my designs at my Facebook store www.facebook.com/justjuniors and started by making individual transfers, and buying t-shirts from the likes of Target to iron the transfers onto. But there were too many what-ifs, and the black in one of the ones I made Samara ran in the wash. They also took extra care - needing to be handwashed.

Lets face it, what parent, let alone parent with a child with special needs, has time for handwashing? Not me, that's for sure. So that's when I decided to go hunting for a business that could make the t-shirts for me. With the help of a dear friend, Brooke, I found the Zazzle site, and then checked out the Cafe Press stores too.

Expanding into this market has meant that I could offer you products other than t-shirts too. From magnets and badges, to ipad covers and shoes. The range was really impressive.

At this point, the only place offering the shoes is Zazzle, and the only place offering customisable designs (add your own name, disability etc) is Cafe Press. Hence the reason for offering my designs at both places.

I hope you enjoy browsing through my stores, and if you would like to see something made for your/your childs disability, please let me know! I would like everyone to be able to promote their causes, not just those of us whose kids have the more common disabilities!