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Cassie lives in Southern Shores, NC and works up the road in Corolla, NC selling kites, games, puzzles and sea shells by the sea shore at Flying Smiles Kites
She first experienced kites as a child on vacation on the Outer Banks, where her dad bought a new sport kite every few years. She remembers him flying Trlbys and Peter Powells as far back as her memory goes. They would go back to the Detroit area, where the family would try to fly in tree filled parks, fueling a lot of her advice to new kite flyers that she encounters now who are landlocked. She finally got involved in kiting herself in the summer of 2002, when she got a summer job at a kite shop when she was a college student. By the time she graduated college and moved to Austin TX, she had managed a kite shop and got a job with New Tech Kites. She didn't know it then, but her path in life had been found.
Since then, she's spent more of her adult life finding her way back to kites, over and over again. She worked for New Tech for years, taking a hiatus to help open the family business, Flying Smiles Kites. While preferring quad flight from the beginning, that never affected her desire to be able to attend festivals for any type of flying. She's flown on team Go Big or Go Home out of Texas, where she helped wrangle big kites. She taught dual line lessons at so many festivals, she's lost count. She's helped with event organizing, has sat in the assistant seat in sound tents, and has ground crewed for any person who asked for help. During 2020, her parents called her back to the kite shop life, and now she's running Flying Smiles Kites, counting her blessings for every day that she gets to spend putting joy into the world.
To date, Cassie hasn't sought out any awards or offices in kiting, as she prefers to spend her time focusing on the business and her various projects (sewing things, building things, making things, dying things) that are always lined up. She's been very fortunate to travel to Dieppe France in 2022 for their kite festival, and then Cervia Italy for Artevento in 2023, 2024 and 2025 to learn from the amazing community of kite artists represented there. In 2025, she learned how to tie dye ripstop nylon, thanks to countless conversations with Steve Anderson, and is finally working on a list of kite building ideas that may never end. One of the biggest honors of her kiting career to date was entering one of her first kites in the 2025 Artevento auction at the request of the auctioneer, Paul Reynolds. While she is excited that the kite sold, she's more honored by the support she received from her most respected and loved kite builders.
Previous classes:
UMAKE will be her second kitebuilding workshop teaching experience, but she's been teaching for most of her life in various formats.
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