About
The Creative Makamae
Ka Moʻolelo
The Creative Makamae, LLC launched officially in 2021. Kanaka owned and operated and based in Hawaiʻi, the intention behind The Creative Makamae is to share both digital artwork and products inspired by Hawaiʻi, aloha ʻāina, and ʻike kūpuna. Each piece is deeply intentional and hopes to inspire conversations and connections.
The inoa: The Creative Makamae.
Ma ka ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi, makamae translates to precious or highly prized. It is also the owner’s name. Thus, The Creative Makamae was created with the hope of becoming a space for honoring ʻike Hawaiʻi and for educating through art.
Owner + Creator: Makamae
Ke aloha nō! I am Makamae - owner and creator behind The Creative Makamae. Raised in Wahiawā and currently residing in Kailua, art has always been an outlet to express myself. I am guided by the following philosophy:
I kū nei wau ma ka puka, a laila, e haʻi wau.
I stand in the doorway and from there I speak.
The doorway I stand in is the doorway of my kūpuna. From kuʻu wā liʻiliʻi, my tūtū kāne instilled the importance of standing firmly in your culture - mostly through moʻolelo and then by encouraging me to learn ʻōlelo makuahine so he could hear it around the house once more. While he showed me what it meant to be a proud Hawaiian, like many, ʻōlelo was not common in our household and ʻike Hawaiʻi came in the form of moʻolelo about our ʻohana.
The doorway I stand in is the doorway of education. Where my ʻōlelo journey began at Kamehameha and continued at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. I pursued my Bachelor’s in Family Resources and Master’s in Educational Foundations at Mānoa and, while not explicitly related to ʻike Hawaiʻi, my Master’s grew my love for history, especially Hawaiian history.
The doorway I stand in is the doorway of all of these lived experiences, which has inspired my art to become a space to continue growing the connection between myself and my moʻomeheu.
Mahalo for entering this puka and for your kākoʻo! I’m so excited to continue sharing and growing with you all.
Our Business Model
We designed our business around Aloha ʻĀina and Community Giveback.
Aloha ʻāina for us is ensuring we are impacting the ʻāina as minimally as possible. This means researching ways to be sustainable and sourcing as locally as often as we can (i.e. local vendors, purchasing supplies locally), utilizing recycled material when possible (i.e. printing our planner on recycled paper), and researching ways to produce sustainably. For our shipping, every piece of our packaging is recyclable - down to the glassine bags that holds our stickers.
Community Giveback means that we invest our time and energy in both creating high quality products for our customer base as well as offering the same level of quality via services and products at low-to-no cost specifically for Native Hawaiian serving organizations, such as nonprofits or Hawaiian-based charter schools.
We do not share as openly about our community giveback efforts as we feel that is an intimate space we share with the organization we are collaborating with. If the organization requests we share about our collaboration or gives us the permission to share, then we will share about it.
However, broadly, some of the things we have done in these efforts include donating our planner to a school to provide to recent graduates freely, collaborated with another school to customize our planner to fit their students’ needs, created designs and materials for organizations, and designated portions of sales to be donated to nonprofits we believe in.
The Pillars of Our Business
Ao Aku, Ao Mai:
We operate in a constant state of knowing that there is always room to learn, grow, evolve, and everything in between. We do consider ourself an expert - we know some things, not all the things, but we’re happy to share what we do know or guide you to a resource.
Mookuauhau:
We are a culmination of all who came before us - a speck on the continuum, carrying forward the kuleana that was carried before us. Therefore, we constantly remember our genealogy.
Moolelo:
We are informed and guided by moʻolelo and the way it shares with us how our kūpuna experienced the world at that point in time. Therefore, we constantly remember our genealogy.