10 Years of The Creative Curator

I cannot believe that it was ten years today that I launched this blog. I thought it would be fun to do a recap of sorts… to remind myself of how far I’ve come in my personal mission to get more people sewing for themselves.. to be able to look back in five, ten or even fifteen years from now and understand that I didn’t quit when times got hard, but pushed through with new ideas, new directions and stood true to my beliefs.

One of the first photos I uploaded to this site was a project from a Professional Sewing Course I did at Central Saint Martins in 2006…

I think I was trying to highlight that I could sew even though at the time of this photo I was more obsessed with learning pattern cutting.. Ha ha!

And so now let me take you (as much as I can) on a journey through ten years of The Creative Curator.

2016 – The Year It Started

I showed a collection at Brighton Fashion Week the year before (check this video for a snippet) and became really disenfranchised. I’d paid about £1000 to be part of the show, had made a significant investment into using organic and fair-trade materials for the collection and saw almost nothing of what was promised in terms of video footage or photography.

It felt like the purpose of the show was to highlight designers from overseas that had cash to drop on ‘ecological printing’ rather than more earth friendly sustainable practices, and I decided shortly after the show that I was done with creating and showing fashion collections.

But what could I do with this fashion design training I had?

I took time out to think about what was important to me. What felt right in this world of exploitative fashion.. and decided I could do a very good job of inspiring and teaching people how to create their own sustainable fashion.

And so, The Creative Curator was born – 16th May 2016!

I launched the website with some very bad illustrations… hand drawn by me, and in all honesty quite rubbish!

I started by focusing on all things creative – art, fashion, poetry etc – hence the name The Creative Curator… but then niched right down to just sewing and pattern making within a month on the advice of someone I was working with at the time.

Some of the graphics for Pinterest back then were also… really bad!

But it’s ok.. I learned as I went and things clearly got better!

2017 – Still Finding My Feet

In the second year I was still rocking the odd branding. Was it odd or is it just that time makes everything look aged?

I had started focusing more on pattern making, and created a thirty-thousand word email course called Pattern Making Basics. I wrote it all out myself across fifteen emails, and I scheduled them out using very expensive software, so subscribers received an email a day for 15 days.

It didn’t cost them anything except their email address… and this would come back to bite my later on…

This was the year that I also started my YouTube channel, though it looks like I only have three videos left from that year…

2018 – A Complicated Year

The second year, and this was a tricky one. Due to my (now) fiancé’s work situation, we packed our life into storage boxes and moved to Anglesey for almost one year, at the beginning of 2018.

We rented one room in an old rectory on the outskirts of a very small village, and from there I would attempt to create tutorials with the limited amount of resources and cash I had available to me.

It was around May or June of this year that I changed up the branding of the website, and switched from the muted blue and yellow to fun orange, pink and dark blue-green. It still wan’t ‘right’ but it was better.

Meanwhile, as a ‘side hustle’ I started managing Pinterest accounts for people, helping them to get traffic to their website and products.

It wasn’t exciting, but it paid the bills and kept The Creative Curator ticking over, and I got to spend time by the sea which is always a win.

2019 – All Change Again!

At the end of 2018, my man got offered a job – in the Netherlands. There was no chance of me being left behind when he asked me join him, and so we packed up what little we had in Anglesey, left most of it at our respective parents and found a rented home in Groningen, in the north.

We’ve been here ever since, and the photo below is the very first one uploaded to the blog in early March once we’d settled in.

Don’t get me wrong.. it was still tricky to get work done. I had carried my heavy old Bernina 1008 sewing machine over as hand luggage, and packed as much fabric as I could in the only suitcase I had. It was far too heavy and I had to pay £65 fee at the airport as it was 30kg instead of 23kg! Oops!

I was finally able to start really working on the blog and building it up. The first project tutorial I posted in my new work room was the tote bag tutorials, using an old curtain fabric. Even back then my focus was on reusing fabric as much as possible.

On the left is a top I made from a scarf I found at a charity shop and the right a wrap skirt made from a cotton dress I received as a hand me down.

Even though I was still relying on Pinterest account management for my main income, I did start earning more from my website and products this year, and was starting to get into my groove.

Our boxes from the UK storage finally arrived in The Netherlands in late October and I was off and running!

2020 – And Then The World Shut Down

It was the year when everyone stayed home. Planes grounded. The world went online and you’d think that would have benefited someone like me.. alas, I spent almost six months from March through August in the UK with my parents, helping to keep them safe and healthy in a world that they were told was no longer safe.

It astonishes me that it was already six years ago, but maybe that’s also because when I got back I worked and worked and worked to make up for the ‘lost’ work time.

From pattern making tutorials and sewing pattern tutorials…

…to sewing techniques and project tutorials.

I’d hired a VA to help me get The creative Curator properly up and earning its keep, and it was starting to pay off.

2021 – The Year That Crushed Me

And with every high comes an even bigger low… It started well with making my favourite pair of jeans ever to exist…

I taught an online draping class during the late spring which went down so well…

And then by Christmas I was 2.5 months into living life without my Mum being with us.

2022 – The Year That Grew Me

It turns out that grief does weird things to the brain. It finds a way to keep going, and my brain’s way was to push me hard into work.

I have tutorial projects (like the one in the photo below) that have still never been seen here. The photos have been edited and uploaded but the pace at which I was working meant that a lot never got written up and published.

And then there are the 26 videos. After years of publishing just a small handful each year, I finally gave it my all and published 26 videos on my YouTube channel in 2022.

I worked as if the being chased – and I guess I was.

2023 – The Year That Google Crushed Me

This was the year when AI really became a thing, and Google crushed many ‘information’ sites – which they consider a blog to be – in its August update.

Up until this point, I was working on developing sewing patterns. I thought this was a great plan as my income was coming from ad revenue which gave me ‘time’ to work on products – I was future proofing my business, or so I thought.

I had gotten a shared office space, so that I could work better away from the home. More space, bigger work areas, I was really happy with how things were starting to look…

I started a subdomain to sell my sewing patterns from shop.thecreativecurator using Shopify in May.

And then in August when the update hit, suddenly I was trying to survive on less than $200 a month.

There was nothing to do to increase that income so I cut every business cost I could. I had to let my VA go. And I closed the Shopify shop too and went with a lower priced solution. But I was tied in with the office cost and struggled hard.

2024 – Testing, Pivoting, Testing Again

With 2023 behind me, I entered 2024 feeling excited that the year would be better and I threw everything at the wall to see what would stick. It became clear that the email list I had grown with free products was worth very little.

My subscribers were mostly no-buyers. Sure they liked me. They wanted to know more about me. But they didn’t want to buy from me.

I created a couple of small patterns that were paid, and attempted to nudge people into buying them. The patterns were not what I had been working on in 2023, but they were small enough for me to do and somewhat quicker as a one man band again.

I made tutorials featuring my sewing patterns. Written ones here on the blog and video ones for YouTube. To this day these have continued to sell best via YouTube.

I then launched a Patreon, which I closed a few months later as I only ever had two members.

I was finally able to leave the office space I was sharing with a friend, and moved back to working from home. This was a blessing as I got more work done – sharing work space with someone who is chatty and manages people meant that my days there would be less productive than at home.

And I worked on more smaller, easily ‘buyable’ products – including the digital sewing planner I’d created each year – hoping that these would move the needle. They didn’t.

I offered online 1-2-1 sessions where folks could work with me on a project with two one-hour calls booked in during each month. No takers, because my price was ‘too high’ at £50.

And throughout this year I was also working on a big project. It was an unpaid one – in that there would be no income generated from the work on it for some time – and the costs of materials for that project were higher than I anticipated.

And because of all the income not being generated from all the testing, I ended up leaving the office space I had joined in May 2023 as the one year contract was finally up.

2025 – The Year It All Made Sense

The year of 2024 had seen my website traffic – and associated income – drop further than in 2023. I probably would have quit completely if we were living in the UK, but in The Netherlands I struggled to get any kind of work, and so I fought on.

I decided I would take what I learned from 2024 into 2025 and really knuckle down. The first thing I did was update the website and branding across the blog. I wrote more personal content so that people would know there was a real person behind everything that happened, and not an AI bot.

I continued creating free tutorials, and I sent emails to my people every week.

Then I started with a couple of free patterns. I thought that if I could build up a list of people interested in each of the free patterns, I’d know ‘what’ they were interested in and could create paid patterns more easily.

The first was my newborn onesie pattern – made because my niece had her first baby and I wanted something sentimental to give her.

I expanded from my small sewing room to a work space in the main living area.This meant I could work more easily on bigger patterns.

And I decided that if I was going to survive beyond 2025 I would need to develop all products under my own name, Eve Tokens. And so there came a rebrand.

The colours across The Creative Curator changed for one last time. The new website www.evetokens.com came to be and I put my existing products there and started getting those smaller patterns I mentioned ready for people.

One of the smaller patterns I worked on was the Hawthorn Hip Bag…

Followed by the Redwing Romper…

And then the Siskin Sunhat…

And there was the Walnut Slouch Pouch.

And I created an online sewing course. My first ‘high price offer’ that actually landed. 🥳

I started sharing wedding updates as part of the ‘proving I am a human’ plan.

And I even tried the whole merch thing that others do.

Spoiler alert: there was one sale, and it was my sample! So I quickly ditched that.

The one thing I did that surprised me most in 2025 was launching a membership. It was my third and final attempt. I’d launched it once in 2018 right before my Mum got quite ill, and I immediately refunded everyone. And the second time was in September 2022. I’d had one person sign up and then immediately ask for a refund when they realised the $USD price wasn’t actually $AUD.

I named it Creative Dressmaking. I figured this as a name would land better with my people than Creative Cutting Class or Creative Fashion Skills – the two names for its previous iterations.

I also offered it at a ridiculously low price. £100 per year or £10 per month. And I got members. Not the freebie hunters. But members who had been with me for a long time. Members who liked me. And trusted me.

We’ve had calls each month since where we chat about each month’s project and chat about life. We have a private community where members can chat with me, ask questions, share what they’re working on. It’s my favourite place to be when I am ‘online’ and I love each of those members dearly.

And Now Here We Are

In May 2026. It’s been a hard year so far – income is slowly going up. Products are being created under my own name and days before the 10 year birthday I also decided that I will no longer be offering any free patterns. It makes no sense as a business to do so.

Instead my focus is on my community. It’s on creating what they need or want and providing them with a space to develop their skills and explore their creativity when it comes to fashion and clothing.

The first is my Design & Make Your First Me-Made Garment which starts on Monday. Those who have signed up already are excited to start, but I think I may be even more excited to help them achieve their vision.

It may have taken me 10 years to really hone in on that purpose… but I feel like I finally found it again. And I’m excited for the years to come… well, once the wedding is over in August this year!

Until then, I’ll still be sharing the personal DIY wedding updates and plenty of smaller tutorials too.

And if you got this far down, thank you so much for being part of my world. For placing your trust in me, for letting me be someone who can bring a little more creativity into your world.

With the biggest of hugs and much love,

Eve