Candice Gorodess - Creative Artist
Growing up with a unique childhood filled with a cultural fusion of Canadian, Israeli, Middle-Eastern and Moroccan traditions, Candice has an eclectic influence on her world perspective. Although she has always been creative, ironically, it was motherhood that birthed Candice’s creative inner artist.
When her kids started preschool, each class had to design a Hamsa to be auctioned off for a fundraiser. Candice worked with the children to create a design using quilling (a style of art that involves the use of colored strips of paper rolled, shaped and glued together). The amount of creativity, detail, precision and playfulness poured into her Hamsa creations.
At the auction, this brilliant handcrafted one-of-a-kind piece of art became the object of a bidding war where it finally sold for $450! This is when Candice, the artist, was born!
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Evoking her playful spirit, Candice continued to create art as a hobby, as time permitted while juggling work and parenting. Never quite enough time to devote to nurturing her creative talents, Candice still strived to meet her friends’ requests for personalized gifts such as decorative wall letters for kids’ rooms, customized step stools, and artistically themed food art, as well as creative favors for kids’ birthday parties.
It was not until an unfortunate accident that occurred in late 2021, where she shattered her ankle that transformed into an unexpected blessing in disguise. With extra time on her hands and doctors’ orders to stay off her feet, she finally had the time to nurture her inner artist abilities. She decided to create a special line of art inspired by the cultural influences in her life.
Candice feels most inspired to create art using Hamsas. She hopes that by bringing more beautiful Hamsas into the world, that maybe, just maybe, it will bring more blessings of peace, positivity, and protection for all that believe in it.
Georgette "Gigi" Vaknin - Director of Sales & Marketing
Mother of Candice, Georgette Vaknin (more affectionately referred to as Gigi) saw her daughter’s unique talents and wanted to support and encourage her in any way that she could. Gigi, always being an entrepreneur herself, ventured into numerous successful business projects in her prime; from chef extraordinaire to realtor, she has always been ahead of her time with creating trends.
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She has a beautiful family, including her 3 children, who are happily married and have blessed her with 7 grandchildren. Gigi has always been the rock, holding the family together and always coming to the rescue with her trailblazing approach to success. Each of her children are extremely talented, with their own creative abilities. Her middle child, Candice, has always been modest in her own creative abilities, but Gigi always knew there was something special brewing.
One day, Gigi’s talented daughter-in-law, Amy, asked Candice to help her create a uniquely customized Double Hamsa design for a stained-glass window for her home. Together, they combined forces to create a beautiful custom Double Hamsa, as displayed to the right.
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After seeing the finished project, Gigi was convinced that she could not let her daughter’s talents go to waste and encouraged Candice to take her creative talents to the next level.
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As a mother-daughter duo, Gigi hopes that the two of them will demonstrate the design idea that TWO hand Blessings are better than ONE! Joining two Hamsas together symbolizes the strength we have TOGETHER. In this day and age, when everyone is so preoccupied in their own hectic worlds, it's important to slow down enough to make a connection, heart to heart, Hamsa to Hamsa, and rejoice in our shared humanity.
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Peace & blessings from our family to yours!
We are proud to launch our new business, Hamsas & More, LLC, and hope you enjoy our artwork.
ALL OUR ARTWORK, DIGITAL DESIGNS & FUTURE PRODUCT LINES ARE
UNDER REGISTERED COPYRIGHTS © WITH ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
About Us
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