When Clovia McIntosh comes across an unmet need in everyday life, she doesn’t lament its absence – she invents something to solve the problem.

A graduate of the University of Bridgeport business school, Clovia is the founder of IRL Innovations – IRL standing for, appropriately enough, "In Real Life." With an eye towards "inventing real-life solutions for real life problems," Clovia has developed designs for three separate products, all intended to make everyday life just a little bit easier.

Clovia’s flagship product is Toobe, a foldable, standup bathtub insert designed to prevent young

MakeHaven aims to provide people with an empowering space to build skills, foster creativity, and spark entrepreneurship. We are always working to expand the number of people we reach, particularly within communities that have not historically accessed the resources of MakeHaven as often.

When the staff of the New Haven Board of Education reached out to us to ask if we could do a program with parents of Fair Haven students, I knew this was a golden opportunity to introduce this community to MakeHaven. This pilot program would be hybrid, with online introductions to skills followed by  in

Project Idea

The idea for this project was to utilize the (awesome!) large format printer to make prints for myself and others. One of the downsides I've found with framing things (especially large prints) is that the frames become quite ungainly to transport/move with. The aim with this project was to make a system that was more portable and simple - i.e. no glass to break, etc. The canvas material is perfect for this!

The concept is pretty simple: clamp two edges of the print with wood strips, and then use a bar behind the canvas print to stretch the print taught. If the back bar is