By Isabella Reilly
The Creative Goat owner Beth Rhew didn’t need to look any farther than her own backyard when choosing the name for her craft supply store. “When I was trying to come up with a name, people were saying, ‘What makes you happy?’” Beth says. “And I was like, ‘My goats.’ They’re my pets. And they can be pretty creative, too.” Beth opened the shop in January 2020 at 630 East St., Ste. 9, in Pittsboro. She had discovered a local need for higher-quality crafting materials during her own artistic pursuits, which motivated her to take matters into her own hands and become a supplier.
“I was a small crafter myself, making shirts out of my home, but realized it was hard to find good, quality materials,” Beth says. “So I decided it would be better to switch gears and start supplying those things for other people.”
The shop was open two months before the pandemic shut down business, but it allowed Beth to pivot. She started carrying fabrics and other materials to design homemade face masks and filled custom orders for local schools. “That’s why the name fits,” she says. “I can change it around; it doesn’t mean just one type of store.”
The shop, in addition to stocking art supplies, offers adult workshops in subjects like watercolor, hand embroidery and crafts that include working with resin. The children’s classes use recycled materials to create artwork. “We’re trying to teach kids to use what you have,” Beth says, and encourages families to work on projects together. “It makes it more special because you’ve done it yourself, and you do it together as a family.”
The Creative Goat also hosts classes for seasonal projects such as holiday hoop earrings, no-sew and resin ornaments, Christmas door signs, fabric mosaics and custom, self-designed Christmas shirts. Above all, Beth says she believes in the importance of artistic expression. “People need to have a creative outlet,” she says.
