Build a Creative Career Through Collaboration | Interview with Free Create’s Kelley Bren Burke

In this heartwarming episode of Creative Juggle Joy, Delores sits down with collage artist, educator, and event organizer Kelley Bren Burke, the creative mind behind Free Create — a new collaborative event connecting artists, teachers, and learners through creativity and generosity.

Kelley shares the story of how Free Create began after her experiences in online summits and teaching on Skillshare, and how she built an event designed to lift artists up, foster collaboration, and offer valuable creative resources for free.

Together, Delores and Kelley explore:
 🌿 The inspiration and evolution behind Free Create
 🎨 The power of creative collaboration and generosity
 💌 How connection and community help artists thrive in uncertain times
 📚 Teaching short, achievable classes on Skillshare
 🐶 A few fun behind-the-scenes stories (including two very different 8-month-old puppies!)

Whether you’re an artist, educator, or creative dreamer, this episode will leave you inspired to share your gifts, connect with others, and embrace collaboration over competition.

Transcript

Delores Naskrent: [00:00:00] Hey there, friends. Welcome back to the Creative Juggle Joy podcast, where we talk about the beautiful chaos of building a creative life and a business that actually feels like you. I'm your host, Delores Naskrent, and today I have with me Kelley Burke, who is a fellow teacher and the organizer behind Free Create.

Now you wear a lot of creative hats, artist, educator, and now event organizer. We were just gonna talk about this before actually recording, and I wanna know what first sparked your idea for free create. 

Kelley Bren Burke: Yeah. Well, thank you for having me, Delores. I'm really happy to be here. I am a collage artist and educator.

I teach on Skillshare. And I was invited to participate in a number of summits this year. It started out with Digital Art Summit with Drew Steinbrecher and he's actually going to be a free create. Yeah. He's actually a free create contributor [00:01:00] with us for this round, and so I got to know him that way. And other people, including Elena Jensen, who's also a contributor with us, I'm a big fan.

And isn't she great? She's, she's just such a good human. Yeah. Yes. And then I did Peggy Dean's Summer Creative, and I knew a lot of the people. I've been in Peggy's community for quite some time, but I connected with people like Don Nicole there, and she's also a contributor. And then finally I did an event called Curated.

At the end of the summer, and I just got to know all of these different artists and they all are so talented and they have different niches and they have different offerings and a lot of them have really generous freebie libraries. Um, Elena Jensen has a really generous freebie library and I was.

Thinking about every time I participate in a summit, I learn so much from different people and I get sparks of inspiration. So I just really wanted [00:02:00] to connect people and I wanted to have it really simple because it's my first event. So low stakes free is about as low stakes? Yes, as you can get, but also.

There's a lot of chaos globally, and people are watching their budgets a lot more closely, and that affects everyone. That affects artists. Bottom line, that, and so, yeah, we might as well just connect with people and see what we can do to lift each other up during this time. So I really just wanted to kind of pay forward the knowledge and the freebies that I've received from other artists.

Delores Naskrent: So what was the moment where you actually realized this is happening? Like. Must have been so cool for you. 

Kelley Bren Burke: Um, I mentioned Dawn Nicole before. She's a hand letter. She just published a book. She agreed to be a contributor right away and she was really enthusiastic and she started sharing it and she has, I think about 85,000 Instagram [00:03:00] followers.

Wow. I don't know the size of her list, but obviously if you have a large Instagram following, you probably have a big list. And she started sharing it. And was really enthusiastic. And when she started sharing it, and I started sharing it at the same time, um, and Jen Nichols, she was also, yes. Early on, we, the list was growing by a hundred people a day the first week.

And I was like, whoa, this is, 

Delores Naskrent: this is happening. This is a 

Kelley Bren Burke: thing. Yay. And then it can snowball from there. You know, if I say. You know, these artists are involved and the wait list is already at 700. It just keeps, helps the momentum. 

Delores Naskrent: That's fantastic. Going, yeah, that is so fantastic. And all of the names, there's not one of them that, I'm not fangirling overall, honestly.

Uh, yeah. Yeah. Like it's nice to see other brush creators because be a part of the same thing as they are because they're all people. I really risk. I really respect. Mm-hmm. So for artists and creatives who are signing up, what can they expect when free Create goes [00:04:00] live? I mean, people are signing up already, obviously, but what can they expect when it goes live?

Kelley Bren Burke: It's gonna go live at, uh, midnight CST on October. I don't know, I. Central time, let's just say. And on October 28th, and so I will send out an email to everyone that's on the list letting them know that the landing page is live and they can go and essentially shop for free. So there's nine contributors. I think that's a good amount for it to be generous, but not overwhelming.

So they're just gonna browse the different offerings and they'll click on one or five or nine, all nine offerings. And when they click on an offering, it takes 'em to the contributors landing page where they will give their email and the contributor will instantly deliver the freebie to them. 

Delores Naskrent: That's fantastic.

I I love that. So, so simple. Obviously we've got it really streamlined. What do you [00:05:00] hope that people feel during that week? Like whether they're downloading or creating or, or connecting? I wanna know what your, what your take is on that. 

Kelley Bren Burke: I hope people feel joyful and connected and inspired. I, I started as a student on Skillshare.

I got an iPad and I wanted to do digital art. I thought I wanted to do hand lettering, but that turns out that's not. My thing, but I tried all different kinds of art until I stumbled on Peggy Dean's collage class on Skillshare, and that was back in 2021, I think. I started digital art in 2017. So I fumbled around with different things for a while and I really love it.

But once I discovered collage, I just fell in love. And it takes, it takes time. Like people wanna find their style, people wanna find their thing, and you just need to keep trying. Different things. And I didn't even want to take that class with Peggy. I didn't. I was not interested in collage. I just was bored and I liked [00:06:00] Peggy and I was like, what the heck?

And it just changed everything for me. Now I sell my collage prints and I just love it. So being exposed to different, we have hand letterers, we have illustrators, we have. Drew does collage and gel printing. So we have a little bit of everything in this group, and I hope people are inspired and that they can find mentors and educators that really click with them.

Delores Naskrent: Yeah. I wonder how that's, that must feel really cool for you too, like getting to know all of the other contributors just kind of behind the scenes like this. How fun has that been? 

Kelley Bren Burke: It has been really fun. It led to me being on this podcast with you, Delores. We had not connected before this. No, I have taken your classes.

Oh, 

Delores Naskrent: thanks. Thank you. 

Kelley Bren Burke: Yeah. I have taken your classes and I have some of your brushes. Um, I think it's like a mixed media set. 

Delores Naskrent: I use it all the time. I, 

Kelley Bren Burke: yeah, [00:07:00] yeah, yeah, yeah. It's been great to know. Get to know Dawn. She goes by Dawn, but her business name is Dawn Nicole. We were chatting and we both have eight month.

Mine is an eight pound Shi Sean. So half sheet Sue, happy Sean. And hers is a 90 pound, uh, St. Bernard puppy. Oh. So, uh, both nine, nine months. Well, right now they're eight months, both eight month puppies and very different sizes. How cute. But it's just been great because I didn't ask any of the contributors to share until, I think when it kicks off.

So people have been generously sharing and, and getting at that. The more we all share the, the bigger this will be and it's, it's. Such a fun thing to share with your audience, like 

Delores Naskrent: Absolutely. It's an, 

Kelley Bren Burke: yeah, it's been really fun to connect with people as self-employed people. We're sitting here, I'm sitting here in my house all day by myself with my puppy, and it's really good to have a community.

Um, Jennifer Nichols has been a great friend [00:08:00] for a, a while now, so I have all these artist friends all over the world that have been really generous and supportive and fun. Yeah, I'm grateful 

Delores Naskrent: I get that. I totally get that. And Jen is so, so generous. She helped me so much when I was first starting out, you know, unteachable, and she and I have.

Talk back and forth many times, and she'll sometimes just drop everything she's doing to record a little video for me or to explain something to me. Very, very generous. And I love all of the other people that you've got. All of them, I've been kind of creeping around their sights and seeing the ones that I don't know yet.

And I really love the whole idea of collaboration in creative work. Mm-hmm. And I, the more I work with other artists, the more I love it. I, I love that you're really talking about that whole collaboration process. So where, where does that come from for you? Like, why have you kind of landed on this as your [00:09:00] means of doing this?

Kelley Bren Burke: Yeah. It's funny, it's, well, I have two different, the, what, I have two different answers. One, one thing I thought, I, I'm a twin. I have a twin sister. Neat. And so I was brought up like having another, another half. Kind of we're, you know, fraternal, but, but all knowing that, you know, we can do a lot together. We can help each other, we can support each other.

Mm-hmm. We're stronger together. And the other part of that that is less intuitive is I'm, I'm a really independent person. I can get a lot of stuff done. I, you know, grew my Etsy business to, um, at its peak, it was a six figure business for a few years. And that's jewelry. Now I'm doing art, but I was a lone ranger for a while, and that's fine.

I, I can do it. I'm an introvert, I'm a homebody. But it really takes collaboration to move to the next level. You just can't do it as an artist. And I, [00:10:00] I don't like to see, can't and absolutes, but I really think it would be very difficult to get ahead as an artist or a business person. Just by yourself.

Yeah. You need sounding boards. You need other people to connect you with people. And the art community has been, the digital art community has been the community I've been looking for my whole life. It's so open and generous. And I used to think that artists, I, I, I wasn't the kind of person that was like, oh, I've been an artist since I was a little crayon and a holding girl.

I'm not, I'm not like that. I'm very analytical and pragmatic, and I used to think that artists were like these, I don't know, flaky, whatever, hippies. Yeah. And I, I have a, I have a bit of a hippie myself now, but I, I, artists have really surprised me. They, the digital art community has been really amazing.

And so many, I've met so many good people and I have friends all over the world. 

Delores Naskrent: [00:11:00] Same here. And I, um, you know, circling back to Skillshare, how you said at first you were just taking classes and that's exactly what happened to me. I had used Skillshare as an educational tool when I was teaching in high school.

So at times if I needed a specialty lesson, I would look something up and I'd watch it together with my. Students. And when I retired, I decided to just do like you did and explore and try some different things. I had taught digital art for 30 years with some fine arts for the last seven years, and then theatrical design throughout that whole period as well.

And. Skillshare allowed me to explore and learn from these teachers that I would never have had access to otherwise. Mm-hmm. I live in a town of 55 houses, um, okay. And I, I, we're, we're near a big community, but you know, it's, it's a drive to get there. I am. I'm at home alone, working all the time as well, but I have now met people from [00:12:00] all over the world.

I have students from all over the world, and I get to choose. Anybody to teach me. Yeah. I'm not one of those people who claims to be self-taught because I have, I've been taught by so many different teachers and I really considerate collaboration. I love the idea of being able to just pick and choose the kind of thing I might wanna do today.

It might not be something that I plan on doing forever, but I have learned from so many different people, and I, I love that. Uh, I, I really, your whole, everything that you've talked about today and your whole inspiration behind. Together. Free Create is awesome for that reason because it's going to give all of the people who participate an opportunity to do exactly that, to just like a la carte, almost sample, you know, sample from everybody.

Do you see it evolving into something more in the future? Just I'm with bated breath waiting for your answer here. [00:13:00] 

Kelley Bren Burke: Yes, I am. I actually have plans to do it again in February, 2026. And I'm thinking it will be maybe three times a year, maybe four times a year. So I already have the whole plan set up. I have a wait list going for contributors for 2026, so that's on my website as well as the free create wait list.

So I am collecting contributors names and I think, I don't know how many people we'll have next time around. I think it will be easier. The second time to get contributors. Hopefully more people will know about it. It wasn't, it wasn't difficult to get contributors, but not everybody. Um, it's, it's kind of hard to understand free create and its simplicity.

I think people try to make it more than what, like, like so is there streaming? Is there, you know. Nope. It's just, it's just the freebies. So yeah, starting again in February at the end of February, 2026. 

Delores Naskrent: Perfect. But I'll 

Kelley Bren Burke: [00:14:00] be looking for contributors in January. 

Delores Naskrent: Fantastic. So in a way, what you're doing is building another, like a bigger kind of a community around this.

So if you could build your ideal community, what would it look like? I, I want Kelly Burke's answer here. 

Kelley Bren Burke: Yeah. Um, you know. In a dream world. Dream world, it would be local and it would have artists and business people. I, I do consider myself an artist and I also very much consider myself a, a business person, and I really like learning from people in different businesses.

But it would be, you know, collaborative. Open give and take there for each other, and I don't see that happening locally. I think it's just too difficult. So I will accept joyfully the community of artists that I have worldwide, and maybe someday I'll hop on a plane and start visiting some people. I think that would be really fun.

Delores Naskrent: I, I think it would be, I've often [00:15:00] talked about that and thought about that because there are. Kind of a core group of us that meet, but we are from all over the world. So it is very difficult and we're all from all different walks of life. Some with, you know, physical restrictions or, you know, situations where it would be difficult for them to travel.

So, you know, there's, there's all that. But, you know, to get into a call or a Zoom call or, or like this, just a, a nice podcast. Yes, it's very nice that we can, we can still, you know, kind of share and talk and support each other, collaborate, all those different things, all those keywords. Uh, it's been so great to have you here today, and I've been really, it's been really fun to kind of, like I said, go through and look at all the other artists that are participating and get to know you and see your work.

Your work is. Really cool, really fun. And I think your, thank you. Your classes must be such a blast for people to take too. When I mentioned it at one of my live meetings the other night, several people said, oh, I've taken her stuff. They wondered, they said, [00:16:00] I you, I recognized her name, but I didn't know from where.

And then they realized it was. Through Skillshare that they had known and taken classes from you. So that's really great. 

Kelley Bren Burke: Skillshare is a great platform to reach a lot of people and I'm, I'm glad I've been able to do that. And, you know, as a student and as a teacher, it's been, it's been great. 

Delores Naskrent: What's your most recent class?

Or do you wanna plug one of your classes coming up or anything like that? 

Kelley Bren Burke: Um, my. Two most recent classes are about creating photo stamp brushes in procreate. Um, and it's really easy. Both classes are about 15, 20 minutes. Perfect. And I didn't know until I took Liz Kohler Brown's collage class a while back that you could create.

Stamps, procreate stamps from photos, and as long as you have any isolated photo, it's really easy. So in these classes, I give them a brush template to start out with, and you're just swapping, as you know, you're just swapping out the images and you can have so many fun [00:17:00] textures and play with blend modes.

So, um. It's really fun. 

Delores Naskrent: You're talking my language. 

Kelley Bren Burke: Yeah. So the first class is just a really quick, this is how you create a photo stamp brush and procreate. And the second one goes into the brush library a little bit and talks about how you can play with the hues and you know, flip it around, give it some jitter.

Delores Naskrent: Oh, cool. 

Kelley Bren Burke: Yeah, so they're both. I really like short classes as a student, and I'm starting to gravitate to them more as an educator, and by short I mean under 20 minutes. I think none of our attention spans are getting much longer, so I really like those classes where you can just get a quick win. 

Delores Naskrent: Well, there you go folks.

Get in there and get that quick win. I would love to, I've been trying to take more classes. Um, I, I have a whole bunch of required classes that I have to go and watch for various reasons, but that sounds like so much fun that I think I could take 20 minutes and easily kind of jam that in somewhere. I think I have an opening between two and 4:00 AM.[00:18:00] 

Kelley Bren Burke: I know there's not enough time in the day. There 

Delores Naskrent: just isn't. Okay. How about a quick and fun lightning round. Are you ready for this? I'm ready. One word that captures free create. Um, 

Kelley Bren Burke: I mentioned win win before, it's one word twice. Um, but I really do like the win win aspect of it. It's really important for the contributors to grow their email list, to grow their communities, and I really wanted this to be.

An easy way to do it. So I have graphics ready, I have swipe copy, and the lift for contributors is, is pretty light, so it's a win for contributors. And then it's also obviously a win for the participants and I'm sure the contributors are also going to be participants. I know that I'm excited to download an option.

You, you have a 65, are you giving away a 65? 

Delores Naskrent: Yeah, 65 brush set because I turned 65 this year, so that day, the day that I turned [00:19:00] 65, I had created this brush set. So 

Kelley Bren Burke: Awesome. I'm 

Delores Naskrent: putting that out there for, for everybody to enjoy. 

Kelley Bren Burke: Really generous of you. Thank you. Oh, 

Delores Naskrent: and I, I really, really appreciate the, the whole collaboration here.

I, I thank you for helping me grow my email list. I really appreciate that. Okay, next one for you, A creative tool or app that you love. 

Kelley Bren Burke: Well, obviously procreate, and my second two would be Canva and also chat, GPT. I know it's controversial in some creative circles, but I use it for marketing. I use it to help me.

I used it to help me build a website. Yes, a WordPress website, like screenshot by screenshot, like, okay, this is where I'm doing what I'm, this is what I'm looking at. What do I do next? So I really do like using chat GBT. I have a class on Skillshare for chat, GBT for Etsy Sellers. Perfect. Um, so it's a great assistant.

I don't use it for art, [00:20:00] but I do use it for the business side of things. 

Delores Naskrent: We just had a podcast episode talking about it in, in our businesses. So yeah, there's, there's a lot of controversy about it, but I think more and more people are embracing it. So we interviewed one of my students and that's an episode that will have been aired before yours.

So that would be something for listeners to try to, you know, just, I guess listen, find out more and before you form too much of an opinion on it, listen to some of these people who are. Using it to help their businesses. Okay, next one. Ready? 

Kelley Bren Burke: Yep. 

Delores Naskrent: You already know my answer 'cause I'm sitting here drinking it right now.

But, coffee, tea, or LaCroix? 

Kelley Bren Burke: I am a bubbly water LaCroix, LaCroix all, all day every day. I'm drinking lime right now, but usually I'm pom ouse. Great grapefruit. And I do like coffee, but I recently started, um, stopped [00:21:00] drinking caffeine. Oh, I was only having like one cup a day and it, by quitting it really improved.

My sleep. So now my husband found a good decaf bean at our co-op that I really like. So he, he gets up before me and he has a waiting for me to go and I just wake up and press a button and, uh, I get my cup of decaf in the morning. 

Delores Naskrent: I, I only do decaf. I also value my sleep so, so very much. Mm-hmm. And I need to get eight hours to, I, I look at, the first thing I do when I wake up in the morning is look at my watch to see how many hours did I sleep.

And then I know, am I gonna have a good day or am I gonna have one of those days? 

Kelley Bren Burke: Yeah. I have an aura ring that tracks sleep really well. Oh, neat. And that's, that's really helped to me. It's like an Apple watch, but it's more, it, it does more than that. So it tracks your REM sleep. It just tracks everything.

Heart rate. It even tells you if you're starting to get sick. Oh, fantastic. That's what I look at when I wake up in the morning. 

Delores Naskrent: So what is your favorite [00:22:00] way to recharge after a big project? That's your last hard question. 

Kelley Bren Burke: Yeah. Um, I was talking about this with my husband and he said that I start the next big project.

That's what I do, and it's, it's indeed what I do. But in the meantime, I. Love reality TV and some people would call it a guilty pleasure. I don't think pleasures are guilty. I think they're just pleasures. So I like Bravo. I like the Real Housewives stuff I like. I also like Dateline and True Crime Podcasts and also books I and The Night By Reading.

I was a bookstore manager for 20 years and so I books were my first love, so I unwind my aura ring. Again, shows me that that's really good for me. I can bring my stress levels down really fast just by reading for a half hour in bed. 

Delores Naskrent: Fantastic. Well, there you go folks. You've heard from Kelly all of her secrets, and I'm so, so glad that you've been here [00:23:00] to just share everything about free Create with me today so that.

All of my listeners will learn about it, and I'm sure you're gonna have lots of curious people after this episode airs. I'm not sure what date we've got it booked for, but I am really excited about the event myself, so I'm gonna be sharing as much as I possibly can. 

Kelley Bren Burke: Awesome. Yeah, and whenever somebody's listening to this, there will be a wait list for contributors and for the next event, whenever they're listening to it, so they can check that out on my website.

There'll be tabs for both of those. 

Delores Naskrent: That's great. If you've been listening in, I hope this episode gets you excited for this event. Thanks for joining me today on Creative Juggle Joy and keep creating, keep juggling, and most importantly, keep finding joy in the process.