Welcome to Creative Mountain Mama. I’m Cicily—the leatherworker, designer, and hands behind every piece.

From my home in the northern Colorado mountains, I make heirloom leather goods from vegetable-tanned leather, genuine turquoise, and Pendleton wool. Each piece is cut, carved, inlaid, finished, and assembled in small batches with the intention that it will be carried for years, become more beautiful with age, and someday be worth passing down.

A Story Rooted in the West

My family’s Colorado story began in 1887, when my ancestors left Ness County, Kansas and traveled West. Each family had one wagon carrying everything they owned. They eventually settled near Rifle, Colorado, where they built their first home into the hillside and began making a life from the land. 

My great-great-great-grandfather, Dr. W. W. Tichenor, became Rifle’s first physician. He practiced medicine, raised cattle, grew fruit, hunted and spent much of his life outdoors. He planted an apple orchard that is still there today and he even wrote about rifles and outdoor life for national publications.

My maternal grandfather was Lakota from the Pine Ridge Reservation and a talented artist. I am left with his artwork—buffalo, horses, Native imagery and scenes of the West—and it remains part of the visual language I carry with me to inspire my work. His paintings are part of the reason I think about craftsmanship as more than decoration: an object can carry memory, place, family and history with it.

The Mountains That Made Me

Growing up, I spent my summers at our family cabin on the Buckhorn outside Masonville, Colorado. We picked wildflowers for the dinner table, practiced archery with our bird dogs, watched moose wander through the meadow, and built forts in the woods. I remember hummingbirds landing on my fingers at the feeder and feeling completely at home in the mountains.

That cabin was eventually lost in a wildfire.

Today, my husband and I are raising our family just 18 miles away, in the same mountain range that shaped so much of my life.

 

What I Make

Creative Mountain Mama is now focused on handcrafted leather goods made in the American West.

My signature pieces begin with vegetable-tanned leather, which I carve by hand before incorporating materials such as genuine turquoise stone and Pendleton wool. I love vegetable-tanned leather because it doesn't remain in the same condition in which it leaves my shop for long. Sunlight, oils from your hands, miles traveled and years of use gradually deepen its color and create a patina that belongs to its owner alone.

I want to make pieces that are beautiful when they leave my workbench—but even better after someone has actually lived with them.

Why I Do It

My first career was in institutional finance. In 2021, I stepped away from that path after moving to the country to focus on my family. In 2023 I started Creative Mountain Mama as a way to sell the things I was making by hand. The business has evolved since then, but the reason behind it has become clearer.

Thank you for supporting my work and craft. When one of my pieces becomes part of your life, I hope you carry it long enough to put some of your own story into it.

— Cicily