In fact, the Hunter businesswoman has clear memories of one particular block that lasted from 1995 to 1999.

 “I just had a real lack of self confidence around my creative abilities,” she recalls of the period. “At university I was a powerhouse of productivity and I think I just got burnt out. I had this debilitating block for years.”

O’Bryan, a graphic designer who commercialised many creative pursuits before founding her company Creative Queen Bees in 2012, will run a Creative Love masterclass on November 24.

It is, she says, designed to give female participants clarity of their creative purpose and renewed confidence and, above all, a masterplan.

“As creatives, we are great at coming up with ideas and inspiration but less about the perspiration, so we have to flip that back around,” she says. “Having a masterplan, also to celebrate action and milestones, is really important, otherwise we creatives are floundering and have self doubt.”

O’Bryan has renewed passion for her creative pursuits following her diagnosis with a rare form of ovarian cancer in 2017.

At the time living a high-stress life in Sydney employed as a creative director for a Sydney magazine while juggling her own business, she took stock and decided to return to the Hunter.

Her sisters, Belle O’Bryan and Cate Lawler, agreed to join Creative Queen Bees, bringing passion for their own creative interests – illustrating for Belle, and weaving and printing for Cate.

 “I realised how much I was operating in fight or flight mode and I wanted to put my health first,” says O’Bryan.

She tweaked the business model of Creative Queen Bees to bring its expertise in a range of creative brand and strategy services to include a raft of online creative courses. She draws on her training at the Creative Problem Solving Institute at Buffalo University in New York for some of the content. 

“We want to share how we balance our lives with our creative lives because being a creative person adds meaning to my life and being creative makes meaning for me and sharing that with others I knew I wasn't alone,” she says. 

O’Bryan says the Creative Love masterclass is suited to women who are starting or scaling up their business and need help to problem solve and plan.

“This is the first of potentially many but we are also going to take it on line which will happen next year, it will be a self-paced course which will flesh out what we do in the masterclass,” she says.

Details at creativequeenbees.com