About the Artist
Emily Stam has always been drawn to creativity and the arts, even as a little girl. It wasn’t until college that she got serious about drawing and painting while in a scenery design class. The assignments were challenging and she loved everything about the design process. Soon after, she was hired as a prop master and scenic artist while as a student in the theater department at Southern Utah University. The artistic skills learned while in college were useful when she started her career as a theater teacher in Las Vegas, NV.
Originally called Sm’Art Cards, Some Art Designs originated as a hobby in 2001. Scrapbooking eventually morphed into card and tag making. Many friends and family members were looking for a personal touch in the greeting cards or gifts they sent out for Christmas. They were excited to custom order their handmade cards. The company was created to share handmade, custom cards with the extra personal touch mass-produced greeting cards often lack. Several people ordered sets of cards, but card making and art was still only an occasional hobby.
In 2008, Emily interviewed for a Language Arts position at a new school in St. George, UT. The principal looked through her portfolio and offered her a job on the spot. The position was not the one she interviewed for but he instead asked her to teach Exploratory Arts and open the school as the first yearbook advisor. While preparing lessons for art class and helping students design yearbook pages, she realized how much she loved creating and teaching art. When the class title changed to theater arts, art once again slipped to the back burner and became an occasional hobby.
In 2014, Emily saw a post on Pinterest about The Documented Life Project and joined the ladies of Art to the 5th in a year-long art journal/documenting project, which continued for a couple more years. The idea combined her love for scrapbooking, journaling, and memory keeping with artistic techniques. Around that same time, she went to a “found art” workshop and learned how to create art from items found around the house or classroom to be used in school lessons. Her love for mixed-media and art journaling was born! Thanks to artists like Roben-Marie Smith, Rae Missigman, and Sandi Keene, she was able to learn new art techniques and work toward finding her own art style. Building Some Art Designs and creating became relevant in her life again and was the perfect outlet for stress-relief.
After teaching theater and language arts for over twenty years, Emily decided to take some time off and focus on her art, her health, and being a wife and a mom to four boys. During that time she was accepted into Makers Tech U as a beta tester and has since then been working toward improvement as an artist.
