Hospital nurse uses her creative side to create monsters and more
Juli Harvey, maker of monsters, gets her best ideas on the back of a motorcycle, tucked behind her husband on long, slow road trips.
Into a tiny notebook strung by a shoelace around her neck go odd street names and snatches of conversation, funny poster slogans and the state of the weather.
“Being on a motorcycle lets me be creative, because everything else is gone,” Harvey said. “It generates a lot of creativity, looking and watching and daydreaming.”
Harvey is a hospital nurse with seemingly split personalities, at least pertaining to her jobs: she’s a costume designer who also coordinates charity events, a jewelry maker who also sews toys, plus she paints shoes and tiles tables and fashions puppets to spec, all while working three twelve-hour shifts at New Hanover Regional Medical Center every week. Snippets from the notebooks resurface as costumes, puppet structure and ideas for the soft, fleecy monster-toys she sews for sale on her Web site and at Blue Moon Gift Shops on Racine Drive.
