about | LILLIBEAN DESIGNS

Hey I'm Kirstin McCulloch and I am a mixed media artist, a storytelling creatrix, a seeker of whimsy and a dreamer of worlds filled with
magic and wonder. Step inside the whimsy and discover the heart behind the art

My earliest memories are of lying in front of the TV, pencils scattered around me, sketching my favourite characters from the shows I loved, or creating fashionable clothing for my Barbies.

I would tell stories out loud while my mum wrote them down, long before I knew how to form the letters myself. And when the stories weren’t on the page, they came to life around me, cereal boxes became scuba gear, and my panda and I would dive deep into imaginary oceans from the floor of my bedroom.

So the urge to create has always been a part of me, which, for various reasons, I ended up ignoring until it became an overwhelming need that coincided with the birth of our first daughter, Bean.

I vividly remember looking down at her and thinking, ‘You can grow up to be anything you want. You are unlimited.’ And in that moment, I felt an almost physical jolt of knowing. “If she can be anything she wants to be, WHY CAN’T I?”

So on the day that our squishy, gorgeous Bean was born, so too was the knowledge that I was born to create…

Two years later, after living in Scotland for almost ten years, we moved home to the small farming town on Wiradjuri country, rural NSW, where I had grown up.

Homesick for our adopted country and our friends there, knowing only a handful of people in our new home, and with now two small babies, I spent every spare moment I had drawing, sketching and painting – moving from my couch to the kitchen table to my garage studio, creating, playing and exploring.

That was where LilliBean Designs was established. At my kitchen table, surrounded by the beautiful chaos of life.

At the end of 2010 I started my first blog ‘Listening to the Squeak Inside’ (you all can still see those first thoughts!!), opened up an Etsy shop in 2011 and sold my very first painting to someone who wasn’t my family or a close friend in 2013!

And I so am grateful for this beautiful, sometimes chaotic, sometimes frustrating ride – every single day.

Mac and I still live in my hometown, and adding to our little family with another child (They are known as Bean, Bug and Beastie or collectively as the ‘TERRIBLE TRIO’), and a German shepherd who thinks he is a lap dog and a COVID cat who sometimes wants a cuddle but really wants nothing to do with any of us…

We are constantly trying to figure out if there is such a thing as a work-life balance, usually bumbling along in a world filled with school and after-school hobbies, trying to spend time with our family and friends, Mac’s busy workload and of course LilliBean Designs.

SOME THINGS ABOUT ME that only my friends know are:

I love taking photos of tiny little things that I find in the garden, on the beach, on walks or just around.
Mac and I moved to Scotland for a bit. We set off to travel the world for a year and ended up settling on the beautiful Isle of Raasay, off the northwest coast of Scotland, for nearly 10. Almost 20 years on, I still miss the island and the people who live there terribly and dream about them constantly.
When the Terrible Trio asks, “What are we doing today?” I always reply, “The same thing we do every day, Pinkie – try to take over the world”, because I loved Pinkie and the Brain as a kid. It amuses me that Mac and I get the joke, but they don’t!
I love a good romance novel – sci-fi, suspense, comedy, MC lite, paranormal. Anything but historical, and I am in. I blame my Nan and her Mills and Boon collection that I used to read in the Summer holidays when I was 14.
I am still learning to love myself for who I am. Not who I was, who I think I should be or who I want to be in the future. Who I am in this very moment in time. This is a big theme in my work.
I love, love, love when my creations find their forever homes. It fills me with so much gratitude and joy. But even if I didn’t sell a thing I would still create because I have to.
I always wear a literal (albeit small) crown on a chain around my neck to remind me that I am a queen and I got this shit handled…. most of the time. Ok some of the time!