Martina Calvi
Martina Calvi is a Sydney-based content creator
Craft’s cool girl Martina Calvi is bringing back playtime
Martina Calvi’s brand of content feels more like a portal into a dream than a social media profile. Famed for vibrant colourways and kitschy patterns, the Sydney-based creator has soared to new heights over the last year for her craft-centred feed. With endless viral art projects and even the attention of celebrities like SZA and Halsey, Martina is growing synonymous with craft, play and creativity for the digital generation.
On TikTok and Instagram, she’s earned the alias of the ice pepper girlie, the tin fish candle girlie and even Martina-core: a title bestowed to define her very specific art aesthetic. A scroll through her digital diary, and you’re transported to Martina’s world of whimsy and warmth. I first found her content during a creative slump – a TikTok slideshow of day-in-the-life images. Each swipe was a new scene that felt refreshingly real but inspiringly beautiful. Immediately finding home in my saved folder, Martina’s content was a spark of joy that could revive the monotonous moments of everyday life with a hint of romance.
The domestic subject matter is no coincidence. Martina emphasised: ‘‘I like proving to myself that everyday moments can be beautiful and an opportunity for creativity.’’
Today, her muses range from shell moulded butter and pastry bows to an amaretto cherry in melting vanilla ice cream. The most famous star of Martina’s content is her scrapbook journals.
Martina’s journals are a collage of mementos, stickers and writing that freely scatter over each page. This style is a far shift from the rigid order of bullet journals. It’s chaotic, colourful and full of life, creating joyful scenes out of the scraps we’d usually bin.
With projects like these, Martina is championing the new art of ‘girl mess’ – a TikTok-born subculture that pushes back against the sad minimalist world of blank spaces and few belongings. ‘Girl mess’ sees messy piles, trinkets and tchotchkes as evidence of authenticity and sentimentality rather than signs of laziness, hoarding or ‘women’s stuff.’ In her own words, ‘girl-mess’ “embraces the messiness, intricacies and fragments of everyday life and girlhood.” By capturing things as they are, she’s fascinated by the power of ‘girl-mess’ not to “leave out what’s interesting and real to a person.” This has led to Martina’s one-of-a-kind art style that’s filled with personal tokens, real life and fun-for-fun’s sake – and wants you to create, tinker and play with no end insight as well.
After numerous years working as a creative, Martina seems to take to the world of crafting with ease. For many of us, it can feel daunting – yet somehow still exciting. We once spent years as kids at the craft table, creating just to create, so this boundaryless type of art strikes at our inner child. And that’s the point. Martina revealed: “A lot of what I create is born out of nostalgia and sentimentality for a pre-digital/internet childhood.” Her art aspires to bring back playtime and reintroduce these once-daily pleasures of craft back into our lives: “It’s never too late to do things that make your younger self happy.”
The craving for childhood joys emerges as a collective feeling, with crafty things like the altoid tin and bows on anything continuing to trend. In response to the craft’s newfound virality, Martina said: “I think people resonate with that yearning for a creative outlet, for playfulness and small joys, or nostalgia for things they loved creating as a teen or child.” As she points out, “People have always been crafty.”
However, what’s refreshing about the current moment is the celebration or even just the space being afforded to sharing personal art and projects online – without a focus on mastering the skill for the sake of turning a hobby into a side hustle.
With almost a quarter million followers on her Instagram, Martina spearheads the crafting movement. The community she’s fostered could possibly be the nicest place on the internet. Find heartwarming comments that compare Martina’s profile and community, Crafty Club, to “a strawberry field and a bouquet of tulips.” On each post, you can find comment after comment thanking Martina for the inspiration she brings to their life: “You make me want to be a creative girl SO bad, like I want to do so many things. You make me realise that I don’t have to excel at everything…”
It’s this sea of positive responses – full of excitement and vulnerability – that keeps Martina inspired. “I’ve been on the internet for almost a decade and after COVID I sort of wondered ‘‘why am I even still doing this?” she admitted. “But then I started just sharing and creating from a place of joy again, and I guess that mindset is contagious. Knowing people find it inspiring encourages me to stay in that headspace.”
In 2023, Martina launched her Crafty Club via Instagram channels to provide her community with a space to exclusively gather and share, through which she feels like she’s “found [her] people”. Most recently, Crafty Club has launched a Snail Mail Swap, which sees her craft girlies send each other letters and mail art to make new pen pals offline. With experiences like these, Martina is fully leaning into pre-internet nostalgia with slower-paced activities and screenless sources of fun.
You can’t help but be itching to have a go with the craft scissors, gluestick and journal when exploring Martina’s content and experiencing her keen ability to make the messes of life into art. For aspiring crafters like myself, Martina recommends spending more time with paper: “Draw, scribble, write your to-do lists. Start pasting things in. Just let your mind wander off-screen.”
Martina’s Tiny Store is her latest venture, which turns the @martinamartian feed of art into purchasable keepsakes like stickers, pocket journals and zines. With tools for our craft boxes now at the ready, Martina has one intention for us:
“I want to keep inspiring people to approach life with creativity and playfulness, regardless of who they are”
Words - Kitty Lloyd
