Cathie Filian: Creativity As Lifestyle

Each day is an adventure for Cathie Filian, the creative force who produces and hosts the television shows Creative Juice, Witch Crafts and the forthcoming Makeology on HGTV and the DIY Network.

Cathie publishes books, sews, crafts, designs clothing and accessories, paints, appliqués, cooks, and even gardens. She and Steve Piacenza are national spokespersons for Plaid Enterprises, where they contribute original design, recipe, and home décor ideas. They also contribute to an eye-popping number of periodicals, radio and internet podcasts, and blogs.

Her secret to making creativity a lifestyle is seven-fold: like what you do, don’t care if someone else likes it or not, vow to make a lot of mistakes and learn from them, realize there’s more than one way to do something, look at possibilities instead of what isn’t there, be brave enough to take risks, and tune out naysayers.   “Most important,” she adds, “is to simply start.”

Dye-Hard At A Young Age

Cathie was immersed in creative endeavors at a tender age when growing up in the Midwest. “At seven, I had my first Rit tie-dye birthday party,” she remembers, “So Rit Dye has been part of what I do for most of my life now.”

She began to sew and make her own clothing when she was eight, and worked at a fabric store in high school. “I learned the basics and branched out from there. And I appreciated how convenient it was to find Rit at the grocery store,” she recalls. “Its quality and affordability made it so easy for me to experiment, and proved that you don’t need a lot of supplies to be creative.”

In college at Ohio State University, she studied art history and fashion design, and garnered an Outstanding Senior Design Award, which she parlayed into a career in film and theater costume design. On the sets of films such as Heartbreakers, Rushmore and Vanilla Sky, she would use Rit to craft clothing for the set, and for herself as well. The cast and crew would often ask her where she found her unique jewelry, purses and clothing -- which is how she knew she was on to something great.

For film work, she would custom-mix her own colors. “You can’t film bright white,” she explains, “So I would use a half teaspoon of liquid Tan and Pearl Grey to dull white clothing for the camera. I literally went through hundreds of boxes of Pearl Grey.”

From Behind The Camera to Camera-Ready

After a decade, she grew tired of the film business and the 17-hour workdays. She jokes, “I wanted to get out of the business, so I jumped back in five years ago with my own TV show."

Cathie saw a need for a broad-based arts and crafts show that would interest both beginning and advanced crafters, so she created a 17-minute pilot with $3,000 from friends. The show, Creative Juice, was purchased by the DIY Network within a month, and then its sister station HGTV purchased 104 episodes, along with numerous spin-offs.

To render her success all the sweeter, she was celebrating her wedding in Capistrano, CA (which was easier for her Midwestern family to navigate than her hometown, Los Angeles) when she received the happy news that her TV show was green-lit. So in one fell swoop and memorable weekend, she celebrated a wedding and TV show amongst her loved ones.

Since then Cathie, Steve Piacenza and their partner Greg Byers have been nominated for Emmy Awards for Outstanding Lifestyle Hosts for Creative Juice and for Outstanding Lifestyle Program for their work on the show Witch Crafts.

Immersed in Colorful Ventures for Craft Junkies

In addition to Cathie’s book, 101 Snappy Fashions: Oodles of One-Piece Designs for Babies, she’s also published Creative Juice – 45 Re-Crafting Projects and Bow Wow WOW! – Fetching Costumes for Your Fabulous Dog, all through Lark Books, available at Amazon.com. She and Steve also pen DIY Hobbies, a syndicated newspaper column, and regularly update their blog, as well as contribute to numerous magazines.

Cathie will soon debut a new crafts & sewing TV show called Makeology. The show’s core audience will be moms with children between the ages of 6 and 10 years, and the show’s premise is to inspire children and their mothers with core knowledge of arts and crafts basics -- which could then spark a life-long love of creating beautiful objects and clothing.

For inspiration and to relax, she visits thrift shops, gardens, bakes, travels, and goes to the movies. Sometimes she’ll watch a movie and her previous job will come to the fore. She’ll think, “Hmm - I really like that character’s sweater.”

Cathie was also featured on Oprah.com in a Dove Beauty interview, and speaks at conferences for entrepreneurs and creative ventures. Her Etsy shop opened in November of 2007 and is full of useful and unique craft items, and her blog is a rich source of crafts inspiration.

Cathie and Steve, in conjunction with Plaid Enterprises, have also launched the sale of Hot Glue Gun Helpers: pink & black tools designed to prevent hot glue gun burns, which mercifully include a mat, finger cap, tweezers, and press wand.

How does she manage to keep her life organized? With foam core boards as calendars, of course, which she can carry from kitchen to craft room or wherever when on the phone. “I need a large-scale calendar,” she laughs, “A Blackberry just won’t cut it.” It’s precisely this sort of ingenuity that fuels Cathie Filian’s success.  “Every day brings something new,” she marvels, “You really never know what will cross your path.”