For Nicole Stevenson, creativity is about crafting a life with meaning

Even as a child, Nicole Stevenson was destined to create and share her art with the world. When she wasn’t making custom clothes for her Barbies, she was building a homemade storefront made from an old refrigerator box or decorating pieces of plain paper and selling it to her neighbors as stationary.

Today, as the CEO of Dear Handmade Life, Stevenson curates events and educational programs for thousands of makers and small business owners. Most importantly for Stevenson and the inspiring women on her team, Dear Handmade Life is a source of empowerment for people across the creative community looking to turn their passion into viable careers.

That goes for Stevenson too. Despite the demands of running a successful organization, she still makes time to flex her creative muscle, whether she’s honing her art journaling skills or using Adobe Lightroom to edit photos taken during one of Dear Handmade Life’s many craft fairs.

Making time for creativity each day. Image source: Nicole Stevenson.

From Murphy Bed to creative mentor

Stevenson’s story is one of passion and hustle. While studying creative writing in graduate school, she and her best friend moonlighted as waitresses to make rent. After their shifts, the pair would rush home to their apartment in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district, pull out their Murphy bed, and paint together. Those midnight sessions would eventually inspire them to move to Venice Beach and try selling their art on the boardwalk.

The turning point came when Stevenson’s hand-painted canvas purses started to turn heads at the local flea market. Soon, she was screen printing art onto a complete line of clothing and accessories that was being sold in 250 stores around the world.

But while Stevenson was happy to find success, something was missing. “The machine was working, but I didn’t feel fulfilled,” she recalls. “I wanted to get back to my roots as an independent artist and contribute to my community in a more meaningful way.”

Dear Handmade Life inspires creators to explore their passion. Image source: Nicole Stevenson.

Realizing that few aspiring creatives had the education or experience required to monetize their work, Stevenson started Craftcation, a unique conference with the goal of helping fellow artists turn their talents into business success and helping them build their skills through craft workshops. Craftcation blew up overnight, spawning a blog, podcast, and more, eventually leading Stevenson to commit to her new vision and launch Dear Handmade Life.

Fostering a community of makers and artists. Image source: Nicole Stevenson.

Editing and collaboration made easy

As a business owner, Stevenson is constantly on the lookout for ways to help her team work faster and more collaboratively. Adobe’s technologies are integral to that mission, especially for a group of people that values creativity above all else.

For instance, Adobe Lightroom has helped Dear Handmade Life simplify the way it shoots and edits photos during flagship events like Craftcation. Instead of hiring one photographer, Stevenson enlisted three of her team members to capture the event and combined their photos in Lightroom so she could edit them with ease on a single platform.

Adobe Lightroom presets give Stevenson’s photos a professional finish. Image source: Nicole Stevenson.

She particularly loved how Adobe Lightroom presets cut time and complexity from the editing process while bringing consistency to the way Dear Handmade Life tells its story through imagery. Whether she’s making wholesale changes to a photo, fine-tuning individual elements, or trying new editing techniques, Lightroom presets have streamlined Stevenson’s editing workflows across the board.

Stevenson is now experimenting with the new generative AI features in Adobe Lightroom, powered by Adobe Firefly, Adobe’s family of generative AI capabilities. Using Generative Remove, Stevenson can quickly eliminate unwanted elements from images in a way that feels natural and intentional. Meanwhile, Lens Blur allows Stevenson to add more depth of field in her photos, making them feel more professional and refined.

Dig deep and die trying

For Stevenson, the promise of generative AI lies in helping artists translate what’s in their head into tangible artistic outputs. That’s an especially powerful motivator for young creatives and newcomers, who may lack some of the skills or confidence to make that leap on their own.

Stevenson’s advice for people in these early stages of their journey is to focus on honing their craft first, using AI to plug gaps in their artistic skills along the way. “AI is a wonderful tool to help you build confidence in your art, but you should never use technology to replace your creative instincts,” she says. “Dig deeper to discover what’s unique about your vision and explore that.”

Stevenson’s views on AI come as no surprise from someone who has always listened to her heart and never shied away from a challenge. “Nobody gets to the end of their life and says I am so glad I never tried that,” she says. “Figure out what you want to do, die trying to do it, and embrace every opportunity and resource that can help you get there along the way.”

Learn more about Nicole Stevenson and Dear Handmade Life on Instagram. And if you haven’t already, click here to sign up for Craftcation 2025.

Want to see how we’ve made Adobe Lightroom even more powerful with generative AI? Check out the specs of our latest release here.