Hey- Thanks for exploring my website and for taking the time to learn about Blackburn Goods!
My name is Emily, I'm 29 years old and I live in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I am a self-taught leather smith and have been working with since I was 16 years old. The first purse I ever made was out of rabbit pelt and old hammock rope. From then on I just couldn't stop! I used every scrap of something I could get my hands on, you should hear my mother talk, I wouldn't let her trash anything. I tried sewing with fabric but there was something about leather, maybe the smell, that kept drawing me back.
Both of my parents are extremely creative and they became my teachers/developers. My dad, Jeff Blackburn, worked as a Firefighter and custom woodworker for more that 30 years (he even build most of my childhood home by himself, yeah... he's legit.) He always says "It takes so little to be above average" something that influences my work to this day. And my mom, Penny Blackburn, can do anything... I mean anything. She has a working knowedge of so many things: Baking, cooking, grilling, accounting, sewing, grammar, childcare, relationships, I'm sure you get the idea. She has this ability to use all her past experiences to inform her creative ideas, this allows her to be successful at things she's never actually done before (Is your mind blown yet?). I would work on an idea as long as I could and then consult them when I hit a design problem. We would sit around the dinning room table drawing on napkins and swapping ideas until one fit. I feel so lucky to have parents that invested so much of themselves into their child's interest, not knowing if it would be anything more than a hobby.
There was a part in me that enjoyed making for the simple satisfaction of it. But I knew deep down I wanted to teach, lead and influence others in a big way with the unique skill. I wanted to show people how easy creating was/is and that they are capable of so much more than they know.
