Happy you’re here –
Calalina Studio is a slow craft studio & digital garden with a deep appreciation for craft.
The name comes from a combination of a nickname my mom calls me & calla lilies— both things that brighten my day.
Here you’ll find: how-to’s, project inspiration, glimpses of what’s in progress, personal reflections— and an invitation to make things with your hands.
Welcome to the studio!
THE STUDIO IS A MINDSET
made by lina
I’ve been making handcrafted items my whole life, and no matter where I’ve lived, it’s the one thing that keeps me sane and grounded. While having a fancy brick-and-mortar studio hasn’t been the norm, having a studio practice is my default mode. I’m compelled to make things and solve creative problems.
My hope is that this digital space helps thoughtful, creative people slow down and find inspiration in making, musing, and gathering.
Get to know me more by reading my Behind the Studio posts.
You can reach me at [email protected] | All images created by Calalina Studio unless noted otherwise.
Postcard from the studio
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BLOG • STUDIO • GARDEN
What is a Digital Garden?
Planted Jul 2025 | Last tended to Nov 2025
A digital garden is a blogging framework that connects ever-evolving knowledge, notes, and ideas.
Digital Gardening
If classic blogs are for complete published works, digital gardens are the messy alternative.
To garden is the practice of tending to a personal website as an ever-evolving landscape where you develop your ideas in public. It is grown slowly over time, and it’s explorable, like wiki pages.
Gardens focus on process rather than a grand permanent showpiece. This type of approach creates a release from the pressure of perfectionism or being right the first time + allows you to spend more time doing.
For a conscientious deep dive, I’ll refer you to what web developer, anthropologist + illustrator, Maggie Appleton, wrote in her gorgeous essay on the history and developing idea behind digital gardens. Worth the read!
Craft as an Antidote to Consuming
Now might be the perfect time to say, this space is one of my personal attempts to find a cure to the endless scroll.
While I love being online, I find myself in a pattern of over-consuming content without a good outlet for all this information to live and breathe.
And as someone who has benefitted wildly from others sharing their work online, I feel a tug to also participate & share what’s happening in my tiny little brain.
Learn in Public Ethos
Learning in public is the practice of following your interests and compulsions, and taking notes along the way.
Fellow digital gardener swyx calls it: creating learning exhaust— making concise summaries, how-to’s, cheatsheets, essays, etc on topics you learn.
This, combined with the practice of gardening, becomes this beautiful ecosystem that encourages you to iterate your work to discover richer insights over time.
DIY Culture & Community
DIY culture is the idea that anyone is capable of performing a variety of skills rather than relying solely on paid specialists.
Pursuing our curiosities and acting on them builds up our individual emotional, intellectual, economical, physical, and psychological needs. And when we do this within community, we have the capacity to build up a collective wellspring of connection and belonging.
Creating Soft Places to Land
It’s not about having all the resources, or knowing it all at once. My hope is that this is a little online cocoon that inspires you to do things and experience more flow + calm.
Labels to know ⤵
Garden Hybrid Variety
This is kind of a digital garden x blog hybrid. Some posts will be more chronological & aren’t meant to be refined, but worthwhile nonetheless.
For example, I plan to make monthly faves lists + journal-like entries with WIP pics and ideas. It’s something I find super valuable to see across time, and it’s not something you need to update because their purpose is rooted in containing that particular moment.
There are cooler, smarter people who have been digital gardening for years and have more to say on what is and isn’t gardening. I encourage anyone interested in making one to use whatever frameworks you need.
Labels to Know
Since sharing a range of imperfect, early ideas to more glossy, developed posts is essential to the practice of gardening, one of the ways to help indicate the status of a post is to organize it.
I’m using: seeds, buds, blooms to help indicate how refined a post is and what stage of the process a project is in.
You’ll also see the date each post was “planted” + “last tended to” at the top section.
Explore the Garden
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