Guest Designer Interview: Okadee SVG

Join me as we chat with our Club Chaos featured designer.

We celebrate community over competition in this space and love to showcase designers doing amazing things with their talents.  In this month’s guest designer feature we are highlighting Lindee from Okadee SVG.

This featured guest designer graciously provided our members with an amazing Spring and Easter bundle. You can see the designs below.

Inside Club Chaos, members are exposed to tons of different artists and get to experience a wide variety of styles and tastes.  Club Chaos is a crafting sisterhood and crafting home, not just a place to download files.

Please note that this post contains affiliate links.

Read on to meet our featured designer of the month and learn about Lindee’s creative process, her current projects, and so much more!

Hey Lindee!  Can you please tell us a bit about yourself?

Hey! My name is Lindee (but I’m also known as Dani – my childhood nickname!) and I live on the beautiful prairies up in Saskatchewan, Canada. 

I live with my two little girls and my husband, as well as many, many stuffed animals, paper dolls, and imaginary friends. We love glitter, rainbows, and can always be found creating – whether it’s playdoh, painting, or using the Cricut!

Could you please share a little about the significance of where your business name comes from?

My business name, Okadee, is a word my oldest daughter used to say when she was one… I often said “okeydokey” and she would respond “okadee!”… I thought it was so cute and wanted to remember it forever, so I decided to use it for my business name. I never imagined it would become such a big part of my life!

How did you first get into designing?

I started out drawing games and activities for my preschool and piano students using sharpies and posterboard. One Black Friday I saw an ad for Adobe’s sale and took the plunge – I subscribed and got Illustrator, watched countless videos, wrote down steps, and limped along until I was able to create my printables there. My sister-in-law gave me a Cricut that Christmas, and after a disastrous attempt at weeding vinyl for a water bottle, I found my passion – layered cardstock designs!

What is your favorite type of design to create?

I really love going back to my “old faithful” – layered cardstock projects. Mandalas, cute animals for cards and parties, meaningful shadowboxes… anything that brings smiles. 

Do you prefer designing or making the actual item?

This totally depends on the day! I LOVE designing, but there really are days when crafting is so therapeutic!

How would you describe your style?

My style is generally “cute” or maybe even “soooooo cute!” (as my daughter often tells me). I love doing the odd “beautiful” intricate piece, but mostly it’s just cute!

What’s something you wish you knew when you first started designing or creating?

Oh man…. so many things. I think the main thing I wish I knew (and am still learning) is how to balance my time. It’s easy to lose the love for crafting and get burnt out when you feel like you HAVE to do it every day – and if your heart isn’t in it, the project suffers! I’m still pretty new to this being only 3 years in, but every day I am working on balancing my time and reserving a little bit for the things that I just WANT to do. 

Who or what inspires you?

I am hugely inspired by the wonderful crafting and design community. I love the positivity, the creativity, and the smiles that come from making! I also have a pretty close group of crafty friends that love to put their own spin on everything Cricut, and I am always inspired by the way they use their crafts in everyday life!

What does a typical day or week look like for you behind the scenes?

My typical day is a little crazy as I balance these early years and homeschooling, but it starts at 4:30 am with designing, photo editing, creating listings, managing customer questions and requests, and bookkeeping. When the kids are up the work stops and we focus (or try to!) on learning (read: surviving). After school and often into the night mama does test cuts, assembling, painting, and taking photos while juggling meals, kids, and the house. Those sleepless nights are often full of sketching so that I have projects to choose from when that alarm goes off!

What’s your most popular item in your shop or on your blog?

My most popular item in my shop changes with the seasons, but one of the favorites is my Tree of Life mandalas (with butterflies!). It is such a fun piece to make. Other than that, my little animals have been popular for nursery and children’s decor, birthdays and baby showers, and even cards and magnets!

When you aren’t designing what can we find you doing?

If I’m not designing you can definitely find me exploring with the kids – we love baking, gardening, and going for ice cream (when it’s not -30 C!).

What is your favorite food?

Mmm my favorite food is Canadian Pizza – pepperoni, bacon, and mushroom!

If you could be any animal, what animal would you be?

I’d be a dragon, no question about it. I love dragons.

What’s next for you?

My plan for 2023 includes adding to my Cricut Contributing Artist profile, creating with my Glowforge (hoping to upgrade my laser this year but we will see about that!), working on my social media presence, and hopefully bringing some smiles to my crafting family with cute things to make!

Where can we find you online?

You can find me on Cricut Access, Etsy, Facebook and Design Bundles at OkadeeSVG. Excited to meet you all! 

Thank you so much Lindee for being our featured guest designer this month inside of Club Chaos.  We appreciate you taking some time to chat with us and share a little bit of the behind the scenes.  It has been so fun to learn a little bit about you and about your process.  Also a big thanks to our Chaos community for cheering her on!

Check out the designs that Club Chaos members get to sample this month from Okadee SVG:

Stay tuned for our next Club Chaos featured guest designer!