Interview with Amy Locurto from Living Locurto

Hey party people!
If you’ve navigated around pinterest at all, you’ve probably seen some of the work of Amy Locurto from Living Locurto and iHeartFaces. She’s incredibly talented, driven, and beautiful…oh yeah…and not to mention an awesome mom! Here’s a little more about Amy:

Design, photography, styling, and craft how-to’s are just a handful of Amy’s talents. With over 20 years in the industry, she enjoys it all. A graphic designer from Dallas, Texas, Amy publishes Living Locurto, a lifestyle blog focused on crafts and entertaining.
Amy designs “Party with Amy Locurto”, a signature product line for Pebbles, Inc. Collections include paper products and embellishments for parties, card making, crafts, and scrapbooking. Amy also collaborates with brands on creative content. She has worked with Disney, Michaels, Parents Magazine, FedEx Office, Reader’s Digest, Marie Callender’s, The Pioneer Woman, Best Buy, Matthew Mead Productions, and more!

You can see why I’m excited for my interview with Amy Locurto! Let’s get this party started.

 

 
It all started when I was in a MOPS, Mother’s of Preschoolers, group. I planned the parties and playdates, designed a newsletter where I featured members, coordinated crafts and then eventually became the main coordinator of the group. It was very fulfilling to share creative ideas and help other women. Plus, it was a big change from my day job of corporate design work. Doing fun things like parties and crafts to help women enjoy themselves became a passion of mine. A few girls in the group were blogging and introduced me to it. From there, I saw there was potential to reach more women than just my local MOPS group. I began reading blogs and was wowed by all of the super-talented and creative bloggers. I knew right then, those were my people. Finally, I wasn’t some weirdo who went way overboard with creative projects — there were people just like me! I jumped in head-first and never looked back.

 

Amy’s Pool Party Collection

A few months after starting my blog, I met my partner from I Heart Faces. We were commenting on the same blog back then and found each other that way. We were both interested in photography and taking photos of our children, but there was no website for people like us who weren’t professionals. So we started I Heart Faces, with photo challenges that had to include a face. We encouraged community and commenting from the beginning. We never expected it would grow to be what it is today. Now we have an awesome community of women who love photography and photography tutorials throughout the week along with our photo challenges. We also host the I Heart Faces Photography Conference once a year.

Planning a conference is a labor of love and so completely exhausting! You never know what is going to happen or if anyone will come. Even knowing that tickets were sold out, I still had my doubts! ha! I get teary eyed just thinking about how proud and happy I was at the first big I Heart Faces Conference. We had done many small workshops in the past, but seeing hundreds of women in the audience including amazing and talented speakers whom I admire and booths of sponsors… well there are no words! My friend, Amandalynn, captured this moment when we were kicking off the event. I think that is about my proudest creative moment to date! I was so proud to know that we were helping motivate and cheer on other creative women.

To see more about the iHeart Faces conference, click here.

Biggest struggle is balance and finding the time to get it all done. I have run my own business for 14 years and I still can’t figure this one out! Now, I just do what I can do and try to get as much help as I can.

I think this changes yearly for me. Of course I admire many business women, but the blog was inspired by my kids and fun things that we did together. Now I’m totally inspired by the readers of my blogs. They are very sweet and many are super talented! The encourage and inspire me to get my creative juices going… or to just keep going for that matter!

Amy’s Baseball Party Collection

 

I always tell people to just START! Don’t let fear keep you from doing something different that could possibly lead to big things.
FYI – Jon Acuff just wrote a book called Start, Punch Fear in the Face. I highly recommend it. It’s the book I was thinking in my head all of these years. ha!

I love washi tape, bright bold colors, owls and patterned paper straws. I can’t get enough of them! They might not be trendy, but things that never get old to me.

Amy’s Owl Printables

Hit the road… chalkboard ANYTHING. I’m so over it.
 
Thank you so much, Amy, for sharing some of your time!
Check out Amy’s blog, Living Locurto & iHeartFaces for more incredible inspiration! Make sure to follow her on Pinterest, Twitter & Facebook too! You don’t want to miss what she has in store this year!
 

p.s. This is YOUR official invite to the party… join in on the Parties for Pennies Facebook page, Twitter, and Pinterest!