Wood and Faulk and Kayla Porter

Intagr.am is one of those rare tools able to connect you with people you've never met, and make them feel like an affective part of your digital life. Everyday people, like Matt who owns a small business called Wood and Faulk in Portland (by way of Kansas), where he makes just about anything he can muster out of wood and leather. His modest blog has always been inspiring. But when he started using Instagr.am, I became obsessed. Now I get to seem glimpses of what it's like to hang around in his shop in the back of his 103-year-old house. I get to see the joy he takes when he finishes a custom furniture refurbishing. And I get to see the remarkable number of tools that he's made a part of his modest practice. It's enlightening, and motivating.

And then there's Kayla Porter. What started as a random stumbling on a girl's Instagr.am feed filled with lovely photos of her new cabin in the woods of Marrowstone Island, WA turned into a lesson on how to build a boat. Kayla started sharing images of almost every stage, including the hands-on classroom, the tools and materials she was discovering and the friends she was making. Apart from the beautiful images she captured, I got to see Kayla's joy and accomplishment, and the occasional waw-waw of a hard lesson learned when taking on a new and difficult challenge.

Both Matt and Kayla embraced the maker lifestyle, for pleasure or businesses, and have made the world a more interesting place for having shared their journeys with us.

Follow Matt's Instagr.ams here

Follow Kayla's Instagr.ams here