From the Editor: July 2016

Getting to meet many of the creative people in Austin as we were putting together our annual Makers Issue was very inspiring. These are not folks spending weekends purchasing foam hearts at Michael’s for scrapbooking. They have taken it way past a private hobby; past that level of being appreciated by only your mom, who will tell you everything you make is lovely.

My maker skills were birthed, and peaked, when I was six. My older sisters tied paper streamers to our Sunbeam Mixmaster, switched it on high and I watched, transfixed, as streamers turned into taut pieces of rope, which were then wound around an empty frozen orange juice can and slathered with glue. Voila! A pencil holder that, apparently, made the “ perfect” Mother’s Day gift.

There were others that followed … mostly Pinterest fails. Like the monkey cake for my daughter Helen’s fifth birthday. It looked more sinister than simian, and parents told their kids to avert their eyes. Our family’s annual Easter pachanga always has a bunny cake. Every year, I ask my sister Michelle to text me a diagram of how to cut up the two round cake pans to make said bunny. My family always texts each other pictures of their bunny cakes. This year mine was voted most likely to have been affected by the Zika virus.

Nope, not all creators are created equal. Which leads to even more admiration for the people who create and make a living out of it. There is so much talent in Austin — it was hard to pick just 20 or so of our neighbors to highlight. In “ Made It” we look at three whose making has busted out of the garage and onto store shelves around the country. And, in “ The Makers Who Fuel the Makers,” we visit with Austin’s coffee shops and baristas. Kristin Armstrong, in her column, points out we are all makers — we make kids, dinner and sometimes mistakes. And it’s all good.

High scores on Candy Crush can’t come close to the feeling you get when you create. Creating connects us to something deeper in ourselves. Perhaps your inner creator has been hyperextending its hand from a third row seat, squirming to get called on. If so, we’ve rounded up the places you can go to make everything from baskets to boats, homebrew to 3-D printing of prosthetics, in “ Unleash Your Inner Maker.”

You’re looking more creative by the moment.

_{Read more from the Makers + Industry Issue | July 2016}