Emily
Designer/Developer
Hosting & Tech Support
Availability: August
Emily lives and works in Florida with her boyfriend and three neurotic cats. She’s always been “artsy”, and her love of drawing and painting took her to Art and Design school where she discovered that being a painter was not a feasible career choice if she wanted to pay her rent, so she chose to pursue the "design" part and became familiar with programs like Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator.
Designing websites started as a hobby when she wanted to make her own layout for her blog, so she taught herself HTML and CSS. Flash forward 4 years and she has designed over 200 websites and has extensive knowledge of all the major content management systems, though she is partial to WordPress. She's an advocate of web standards and semantic markup. She's also a perfectionist who still hand codes everything because code produced from WYSIWYG and HTML editors has been known to make her nauseas. You can view her official online portfolio here.
She's also an amateur photographer (emphasis on amateur). She's in love with her Ti-faux (non-Tivo DVR), named Giles. If she had to choose between Giles and her boyfriend... well, let's just hope that never happens. Other interests (obsessions) include: Netflix, Mexican Food, Harry Potter, and all things Joss Whedon.
Is she a geek? Probably. But that's all the better for you. Geeks are really good at designing websites, it's a known fact.
Karen
Designer
Availability: July
Karen is a Canadian, thirty-something-year-old caffeine addict who enjoys singing along to loud indie music. This mother of two wild boys sprinted away from a high-powered executive position to battle laundry and kiss bruised knees.
In 2005, Karen started a blog design company from home, Troll Baby Graphics. TBG took off like a shot and she joined Swank Web Style in January 2007. Karen is committed to her customers and ensuring they are happy with their blog and her service. Some of the eleventy-billion websites she has designed can be seen in the portfolio. Yours could be next!
Karen doles out celebrity dirt at Famecrawler, and personal dirt at Sugarpants.
When Karen's mouse isn't fused to her hand, which is almost never, she likes to take off to visit family and tell dirty jokes to her grandfather.
All these ventures allow Karen the freedom to stay home and raise her two sons. With the support of husband Daren, her adulthood as a entrepreneur, wife, and mother is indeed, the best time of her life.
Vicki
Designer/Developer
Availability: June
Vicki is a Canadian by birth and a Wisconsinite by marriage. She lives in a little blue house on the shores of Lake Michigan with her husband and three cats.
She designed her first website in 1999 and instantly fell in love with the combination of art and technology. She believes in making internet technology accessible for everyone, and has a particular fondness for designing blogs. She frequently tweaks the design of her personal blog, and won't stop until she is satisfied that she's reached utter perfection.
When she's not grafted to her laptop, she can be found knitting, reading, organic gardening, wrangling cats, and baking bread. But not all at the same time. Likes: yarn, caffeine, libraries, chocolate, and science fiction. Dislikes: unvalidated code and hospitals (she falls down a lot).
Shaz
Designer
Availability: On Hiatus until September
In 1998, as an Engineering student at Ryerson University in Toronto, Shaz started experimenting with web design and development.
She got her first web development job at a typical ‘dotcom’ start up company, and after 9 months working as their primary web developer, she was one of the last few to be laid off. Over the last 7 years, she’s been from a small Toronto-based design firm, to a huge Canadian telecommunications company, to becoming a work at home freelancer, but always doing the thing that she loves most, designing websites that are pretty to look at – both inside and out!
Shaz works with many different content management systems, some include, ExpressionEngine, WordPress, Textpattern, Blogger, Joomla, Drupal, and others, as well as many online stores, Shopify.com, osCommerce, CubeCart, Zen Cart, and others, she emphasizes the importance of selecting the best system for the client and the project requirements.
On her personal blog, Shaz tries to write about the motherhood experience, especially motherhood stress and strategies. Time away from work is spend playing with her 3 kids, cooking, and looking for really cool stuff!
Leslie
Designer/Developer
Availability: June
Leslie is a thirty-ish mom of two very young children wondering where her pre-baby body went. She lives in rainy, wet Seattle with her husband of six years. She has a Bachelor degree in nothing useful and a Masters Degree in Information Technology. After graduate school she spent a few years teaching computer science at various colleges while reading all things web design and began playing with various CMS platforms.
She fell in love with design instantly and has been feeding her nerd addiction by creating websites for herself and others. She believes in simplicity, loves the programming aspect of design and enjoys working with her clients to create beautiful, spunky, fun designs.
In 2005 she started a tiny web design business iFling Designs based on Expression Engine. She's been involved with EE ever since and was once invited to meet the brains behind the CMS she favors, although she has experience and works with all the major CMS platforms such as WordPress, Blogger, Movable Type, and TypePad. If she doesn't know it, she'll find a way to learn it.
Leslie is otherwise known as Mrs. Flinger and often gets mail to that name. It's not her real name but it makes her giggle wildly. She also has a motherhood podcast site at Mamaspod.com where she reviews life as a mom and places for families in the Seattle area with two of her good friends.
Margot
Designer/Developer
Availability: June
Margot is based in Victoria, BC, Canada. She was introduced to web design by her sister in 2000 while dabbling in Vancouver's bustling film industry. She was instantly hooked. Creativity combined with the immediacy of technology was immediately intriguing and the beginnings of a successful and satisfying career was born.
While she began freelancing, Margot was soon employed as an in-house designer with a Vancouver Island Solar Energy company where she honed her skills for over a year. She was then offered a great gig with a Victoria PR & design firm where she remained until having her first child.
While she made a valiant attempt to continue her conventional work schedule with her employer, it was no longer a good fit, as being in an office was no longer satisfying. Determined to stay home with her young son, she jumped back into working for herself and has continued to successfully build a loyal and expanding clientele through her web and graphic design business, Sweet Pea Creative. This, while adding another little member to the family.
When not working or attending to the needs of her two kids, Margot is an avid blogger and enjoys crafting, reading, movies and hangin' out with the family.
Jen
Designer/Developer
Availability: June
Jen and her corporate jet pilot husband live in San Diego with their little dog, aptly named "Pilot."
Jen attended a San Diego college with a major in Communications. She designed her first website in 2000 and has since designed nearly everything - from websites to blogs to t-shirts to commercial brochures to business logos and more! Jen freelance designed for several years and officially started her own design company last year!
A creative person by nature, Jen loves to pour herself into her designs. Her favorite part about designing is giving a client that perfect site that truly reflects who they are and what they are trying to say.
Jen is obsessed with traveling which has led to another obsession... photography. Her travels around the world have given her opportunities to gather pictures of beautiful landscapes and buildings which she loves to use in her designs.
When she is not designing or traveling, Jen enjoys spending time with her husband, flying, camping, and pretty much anything else outdoorsy.
