Meet The Maker – Milomade

Please tell us who you are and what you do?
My name is Evie Milo and I run Milomade – www.milomade.co.uk and I design and make jewellery, stationery and accessories from recycled materials. I consider myself a modern day magpie as I like to collect and hoard all manner of things that I find or that are donated and transform them from trash to treasure. My motto is “Too Good to Waste” and I like to see this as a modern day take on old adage of reduce, re-use, recycle.

When did you first realise this is what you wanted to do for your chosen career and how did you get started?
I’ve always been a keen recycler and a bit of an eco warrior and I’m very aware of the impact our modern society has on the environment. I’m very conscious of how much waste can actually be recycled and our wheelie bin that gets collected fortnightly is almost always pretty much empty as we try to recycle as much as we can. I guess I started Milomade in my teens really, although it wasn’t a business or a means of income then, as I was always making my own jewellery, accessories and clothes. I didn’t see the point of spending lots of money on the latest trends, when I could make something just as good myself at a fraction of the price and with less impact on the environment.

Being the youngest of four kids, I was always dressed in hand me downs and so the whole ethos of recycling has been with me since childhood and as my three older siblings were boys, the clothes that got passed down always needed some sort of modification to make them more girly and to fit properly. It wasn’t just hand me downs though, my mother wouldn’t throw something out if she could make good use of it and this philosophy applied to everything from clothing, cooking, cleaning etc and so I guess the reason I am so obsessed about recycling and reducing waste and making good use of what I already have, stems from these early lessons in thrift.

This whole ethos has stayed with me from an early age, all the way through my college years and up to the present day, but I only started Milomade as a business a few years ago – why did it take me so long to get round to it…well I guess I was just busy with other things – I don’t understand the meaning of the word ‘bored’ as my mind is always ticking over with lots of ideas and creative projects.

I try to use mostly recycled materials within my work. I work with a variety of materials and  I have drawers full of things that have the potential of being turned into something Milomade. I love working with old, used and often vintage items, whether these be buttons or fine silver tableware, maps or old comics, envelopes or even pieces of glass washed up on the beach – all these items have a history and a also tale to tell and when I’m making a piece of jewellery for instance, from an old spoon I can’t help but wonder who used to stir their cup of tea with it whilst chomping away on a cucumber sandwich.

What kind of formal education / training or experience do you have that applies to what you do?
When I first went to college I studied Art and in my foundation year tried out everything to get a feel of what I was good at and what I enjoyed most. I ended up settling on pottery, but got quite frustrated with it in the end and instead resorted to specialising in sculpture – there was an added incentive in that I got a studio all to myself so I couldn’t refuse the urge. I worked with clay, plaster, concrete, metal and ended up learning to weld in my final year when I discovered an amazing local tip full of rusty metal objects like gates and bits of cars and houses etc.

I collected loads of weird and wonderful things and brought them back to my studio and transformed them from rubbish into desirable, strangely beautiful and tactile sculptures. I had the same motto then as I do now I guess! After that degree I took a year out and got really into photography, so much so that I was encouraged to put a portfolio together and apply to go to college again. I got accepted onto a course and I went off to explore this chosen path.

It was a very commercial course and for the first few years I really struggled fitting into that mould. I broke out and did my own thing in my final year and ended up returning to my roots by using found images, found materials and found objects and created wonderful montages and experimental images, some of them life size – it was all so different from what everyone else was producing and was kind of against what the curriculum stipulated but I stuck to my guns and justified my actions and got awarded a 1st for my troubles, so it turned out good in the end.

I never pursued a career in photography though. Soon after graduating I moved up to Scotland on a whim. Not knowing a soul up here, it was quite a scary time. I volunteered in an art gallery, worked on a few films and tv productions – mostly art direction / props / scenery and eventually settled for a desk job as a web designer.

After 3 years of the mind numbing 9-5 with a commute, I went freelance and set up Eskymo New Media Design and this allowed me more freedom to work when I needed to and also follow other pursuits in my free time. Milomade was in it’s infancy then as I was mostly making things for myself as a means to save money and it was only after a few years that I realised how much I enjoyed designing and making and wanted to incorporate this properly into my working life. So now I divide my time between Eskymo and Milomade.

We used to live in Edinburgh, but moving to Fife about 6 years ago was a bit of a life changing experience from lots of different perspectives, but for Milomade, it was when things really started to happen.

What steps did you take to create to turn your art/craft into a business?
Living in Fife meant that I could apply for the Craft Artist Award and I have been a lucky recipient of this grant for three years running now. In 2008 I applied for the Craft Artist Grant Scheme and I was awarded a small grant to get Milomade up and running. It enabled me to set up as a business and develop a brand as well as a range of products. I set up my website, got marketing material printed and Milomade was born.

It has also financed a few workshops I attended to learn new skills. I’ve also been able to buy specialist tools and equipment and get one to one training with a professional jeweller in silver jewellery creation and metalwork so that I could advance my skills and expand my product range. I’m very grateful to everyone at Fife Contemporary Art & Craft, Arts & Theatre Trust Fife, Creative Fife and Fife Council for believing in me and helping me grow as a business.

For the past year or so I’ve also been attending a weekly evening class in silver jewellery creation but this is mostly for the social aspect as being a freelancer can be quite isolating at times, so it’s nice to meet up with other creatives on a regular basis, not only to ‘compare notes’ and keep up to date with the latest techniques, but also to chit chat and connect and share ideas.

Do you have a studio? Please describe your work setting?
In the future I intend to renovate the small outhouse we have into a studio for Milomade, but that plan is way off in the future that it’s barely visible. I normally have two main work areas – one desk for web design that sits against one wall and then my Milomade area which takes up the rest of the room. I don’t have a studio at the moment as we’re renovating our house and I’m temporarily working from the spare bedroom at the moment.

There are little creative piles of my stuff all over the house which drives my partner nuts, but I can’t help it – I need to work and I have the annoying habit of not putting things away when I’m finished and I’m used to having my own space that I don’t have to share and I don’t mind mess and clutter, in fact I revel in it. My studio is normally what I like to see as organised chaos – I know where everything is despite the fact the place looks like a tip. I just can’t help it as I’m normally working on a load of things at the same time and flitting between them all.

I do occasionally have a mass tidy up when I really need the floor space again. A lot of the ‘mess’ is down to the fact that I’ve not got any shelves yet or any proper place to store anything. So I can’t wait to finish stripping wallpaper and paint and lay the new floor, so that I can get back in there and put up a whole load of shelves that are designed to hold all my jars and boxes of stuff. I also want to make a peg board for all my tools, so that they’re all hanging up and visible at all times as I’m fed up of trawling through a tool box to find stuff I need to use.

What are your tools of the trade, do you have a favourite?
My studio is full of delights when it comes to tools – but one of my studio treasures is my mother’s sewing machine – it’s an old Frister & Rossman machine that is so unbelievably heavy that I can barely lift it at times! It’s older than I am and I love the fact that my mum used to use it to sew  clothes for me when I was little and then passed it onto me when I went to college. I would hope that it will last many more years so that I can use it to sew clothes for my own kids one day if I’m ever lucky to hear the pitter and patter of tiny feet.

I use it to make more than clothing though and I am often seen whizzing up my paper garlands or cereal box notebooks on it. It’s quite heavy duty and versatile and I’ve adapted it’s use so that I can run cardboard and paper through it and leather as well as fabric.

Since I started working with precious and non precious metals I have become a bit tool obsessed. It’s great though as my partner is never at a loose end when it comes to buying me a present for my birthday or Christmas – it’s now OK to buy me a set of Dremel drill bits for instance!

How do you maintain balance in your life between work and play?
Because I work from home, this is often quite hard, but it’s even harder at the moment as the house is in a state of transition and I don’t have a dedicated studio/workspace. Once I’m back in there I’ll get back to my organised schedule I hope. You need to be quite disciplined as a freelancer otherwise people start taking advantage of you, so I treat my web design work as if I’m working for a company and not myself. I work set hours and take full lunch break and never answer the phone or work emails outside office hours.

Milomade fits into the time slots when I’ve got no web work in progress or when I need to take a break from coding. I try and devote Fridays completely to Milomade, but that is often difficult when I have deadlines to meet but I try my best to stick to that. The radio 4 schedule and my dog help to regulate my day – I love to listen to Woman’s Hour in the morning and You and Yours over lunch. I’m also a bit addicted to the Archers in the afternoon. My dog always gets an hour long walk in the afternoon and it’s nice to get out of the house and walk along the coast whatever the weather, although it can be a bit brutal here with incredibly strong sea winds and horizontal rain – but you get used to it.

At the moment I’m spending a lot of free time doing DIY but that will soon pass I hope and I can spend my free time doing things I love – mostly baking, cooking and gardening. We’ve just got an allotment which needs a load of work as it’s completely overgrown with weeds. So this year we’ll hopefully be spending a lot of time clearing and getting it ready for the growing season next year. It’s 15 minutes walk from the house, so next year, I see myself finishing work at 3pm a few days a week and heading up there with the dog for some quality time in the outdoors growing my own food – something I’ve always done on a small scale, so it’s really exciting to at last have a huge patch of land to grow much much more.

Do you ever have creative slumps? What do you do to get inspired?
Yes indeedy I do. I’m not much of a typical consumer and so shopping sprees are out of the question. I love watching films, animation and music videos and get a lot of inspiration from these – it’s great to have access to so much creativity online and an hour spent on the vimeo website is often enough to recharge my batteries. I also love the instructables website which is full to the brim of creative ideas.

I find that when I’m not getting anywhere on the coding front, I can go and work on something Milomade and vice versa – one job is a break from the other. If all else fails I go down to the beach – nothing beats walking along the shore with the water lapping at your feet and discovering bits of sea glass and fossils amongst the sand.

Where do you see yourself in the next 5 years?
Still here in Fife in this house I hope! We moved here and bought this place  with the intention of renovating it and bringing up a family – we’re still working on the renovating and trying to ‘make’ the family and both processes are taking much much longer than expected! I would hope to have Milomade fully established in 5 years and have my work stocked all over the UK, rather than just locally. It would be great to have my own shop, but I don’t think I’ve got the right kind of brain to deal with all the legal and financial aspects of running a shop, so instead I’ve got my heart set on doing regular Open Studio events and inviting people into my home/studio to see me at work and to give  them the opportunity to buy direct.

If you had time what new skill would you like to learn?
I would love to learn a few things but my priority would be given to frame making. I would love to be able to make my own picture frames as buying them new or to order is so expensive. I was given a mitre saw years ago and have never used it. We have so many images that need to be framed and hung on the wall that I know I’ll get round to this soon.

What is the best part of what you do, and the worst?
I love meeting the public at craft fairs and having a good old natter with them, but I also love just spending time on my own in my studio designing and making. There are lots of ‘worsts’ and I guess the top of the list would be Sale or Return [SOR] – with craft it’s often expected that you do SOR rather than wholesale but the benefits are all for the stockist and not for you. Don’t get me wrong, I love having my work in lots of shops all over the place, but SOR is hard work. As stockists don’t pay for your items up front they don’t have to go out of their way to promote it or sell it and you can often find you have your fingers in lots of pies but you’re not getting a lot of return for the time you’ve invested. I’ve had a few SOR nightmares over the years and have learnt from these experiences and now do a lot of research on potential stockists and tend to favour those that keep up to date with sales/payments and stock renewal on a monthly/regular basis.

Tell us what your perfect day is / would be.
I would love to have a day off and do absolutely nothing – just potter about in my pyjama’s and make and eat lovely food – spend lots of time with my partner and dog without having to worry and deadlines or money or DIY.

See Evie’s work in her shop http://www.makers-online.co.uk/artist/milomade