About Me

Hello lovelies, thank you for stopping by to read this. I always find it really awkward to talk about myself but I’m a Leo so this is supposed to be effortless, well not for me but here goes.

My name is Alicia Vamvoukakis and I am a full time embroiderist and deck creator. I am most well known for my 2 year endeavour to embroider an entire tarot deck which I documented on my instagram.
I live in Devon, a small seaside town in the south of the U.K. with my husband, Adonis who is Greek (hence THAT surname) and our feisty little Patterdale terrier, Beau.

I self taught myself embroidery in early 2017, I had a very crippling bout of depression and anxiety and I wasn’t leaving the house much. My life got smaller and smaller until I decided to begin this adventure as something positive to focus on. I became happier and more confident and my life bloomed again, at the time I had no idea it would lead to all this.

The only thing I have ever been good at is art. There is no time in my life I can ever remember not having a pencil in my hand and a project on my mind. I attended art school at 16 and completed my baccalaureate degree in Art at South Devon College at 22. I tried the 9-5 gig and bounced around a few jewellery store supervisor roles for a few years but it wasn’t for me.

Eventually I became self employed and worked from home sub-contracted to a company making crystal jewellery products and slowly I was able to devote more and more of my time to art and embroidery. This made the deck slowly become a reality as I had control of my own time management.

Around the time of teaching myself embroidery I also discovered witchcraft and tarot. I realised I’d been neglecting my soul, it was starving and these three things worked collectively to restore me back to happiness.

Much more recently the Covid pandemic hit the company I worked at home for. In one email I became a full time embroiderist, everything I wanted but maybe not quite in the way I wanted. My husband was a self employed personal trainer and his job was gone in the same weekend. I used this new found free time and dived into my embroidery work, producing tarot resources and connecting with followers on social media more deeply than I ever had.

My baby little business of embroidered art was supporting us both and during a time of pandemic too. I was so proud of my past self for working so hard to get happy again and create the deck. This showed me that we can be strong and turn up for ourselves even if we don’t feel like we are at the time.

My business manifesto is not just to make pretty things. I want to inspire others to achieve their big project, whether this is art or not. My whole message is about breaking it down and completing one step at a time.

If I can develop a business around the very slow art form of embroidery, whilst depressed with no knowledge of embroidery or business and during a pandemic then please trust me you can do your thing.

If we look at everything we want to do in life as a skill not a talent then we can learn this skill. If we call it talent we often don’t even try. A skill will be Googleable, you can follow along with a related blog, YouTube tutorial or book and complete each step and practise and get good at that skill.

Before long people will be calling you talented ;) So seriously just break it down google step 1 and start, keep googling each step until you nail it. Don’t overthink it this was hand on heart honest to goddess my business plan.

If you have any queries about embroidery, tarot or just where to begin email me via the contact form on the contact page. I’m an open book and would love to here from you.

Love Alicia x