Noor Nassar creates digital artworks inspired by aspects of Arab & Muslim heritage inside her Tucson home-studio, July 10, 2026.
Inspired by her Egyptian heritage and love of her Tucson home, artist Noor Nassar creates stickers and other works of art representing Arab culture, the Desert Southwest and nostalgic references to childhood in the ’90s.
“I'm very millennial core,” Nassar said. “Think Pikachu and other elements that remind you of what it felt like being raised in the ’90s, but an ethnic person in the ’90s. So, I definitely cater mostly to millennials.”
Born to Egyptian immigrant parents in California’s Bay Area, Nassar said she grew up with deep ties to her family’s culture. Her name, Noor, means light in Arabic, which inspired the name for her business, Happy Light Designs.
Noor Nassar poses for a portrait with her paint-by-numbers canvas artwork, July 10, 2026.
“We went to Egypt all the time in the summers, and Arabic is my second language, and I grew up in a really tight-knit Muslim community in the Bay Area. It really formed a big part of my identity.”
Her signature designs, she said, come from taking recognizable pop culture characters or brands and then adding her own personal twist.
Noor Nassar creates stickers inspired by aspects of Arab & Muslim heritage, July 10, 2026.
“So, I take Pikachu, and I put Palestinian scarf on him, or I take a bouquet of flowers and I wrap it in an Arab scarf,” Nassar said. “Or the Persian rug — every ethnic person has a rug in their house that looks like this, so I turn something like that into a sticker.”
She also creates stickers of popular Arab food and drink brands, kufiyas, intricate cups and coffee, even camels. The artwork, she said, helps keep her connected to her culture.
“It's so nice seeing art that represents these elements of our culture,” Nassar said. “Keeping the culture alive is incredibly important, especially in a country that tries to erase it sometimes.”
But Nassar said culture isn't just about heritage, but also the community you live in, and her recent art features the plants, animals and landscape of Tucson.
“The past few years, I've tried to do more art that represents Tucson, the desert, and I've tried to lean more into that,” she said.
Happy Light Designs by Noor Nassar sells a variety of artwork inspired by aspects of Arab & Muslim heritage, July 10, 2026.
Her Tucson stamp stickers and postcards can be found in local businesses around Tucson like Di Luna Candles and Why I Love Where I Live.
Nassar, who never considered herself an artist, started creating her work back in 2020.
“I grew up very left-brained and in an engineering family, but in 2020 when the pandemic hit, I think a lot of us were just craving this creativity, we were craving something more than just our day-to-day jobs, and so I remember I bought an iPad back then because I wanted to do hand lettering or calligraphy,” she said. “I quickly realized I'm not that good at it, and it wasn't my favorite thing to do, but I was always someone who had a bunch of stickers all over my laptop. That's a big thing in the tech company culture, which is where I was working at the time, you just put stickers that represent things you like, or whatever it is, on your laptop. So I just thought, why don't I design stickers that represent me, and I leaned more into that.”
Noor Nassar creates digital artworks inside her Tucson home-studio, July 10, 2026.
Her first sticker was a pineapple drawn in the style of a mandala, with henna elements, and she taught herself the fundamentals of digital art through online videos, tracing workshops and workbooks.
“I started posting on Instagram, and it slowly grew from there, and now I've been selling my art for six plus years,” Nassar said. “What I love about digital art is I design it once, print it however many times, and then people put that art in their houses, or on their phones, or their laptops. It's such an amazing feeling.”
Noor Nassar creates stickers inspired by aspects of Arab & Muslim heritage, July 10, 2026.
Over that time, she has shifted her focus to creating art experiences for other people, and in March of this year, Nassar started Gather & Glow Club with her friend Twyla Haggerty with the goal of using their own love of art to help craft lovers in Tucson build community.
“I'm realizing people crave not just art, but community,” she said. “I think everyone's a creative person, you just have to find your creativity, so that's what I've been leaning into more recently. It's been a wild and beautiful journey, and just seeing the joy that it brings other people.”
Noor Nassar prepares scrapbook kits for local events she hosts, July 10, 2026.
Beyond stickers, Nassar creates junk journaling packs for Gather & Glow Club, paint-by-number sets and other creative projects.
“Creativity can be remixing something you already have into a different medium,” she said. “I started dabbling more into things like paint by number sets, to include people in the experience. Not just ‘here's a sticker, and that's it,’ but how do I expand beyond that? How do I make it an interactive thing? How do I make them feel like, ‘hey, you're an artist too?’”
“Those have been fun because people buy them as gifts for others. I think it's a really cool way to break down a painting or an art piece into little tiny pieces, and I think by the person doing that they learn that it's not that hard to make art,” she said.
Going forward, Nassar said she has many ideas for future creative projects and products that would celebrate Arab culture.
“I would love to go into toys for Muslim kids or something like that, because now that I'm a mom, I don't see a lot of representation in kids books for Muslims or Arabs, and I do think it's incredibly important.”
She said she would like to create more Arabic art prints or maybe even advent calendars for Muslim kids.
Noor Nassar creates digital artworks inside her Tucson home-studio, July 10, 2026.
As for Gather & Glow Club, Nassar said the crafty community has grown exponentially since their first event.
“It's been an insane amount of growth, and for me, growth is not just the number of people coming, but the ones coming over and over and over again. That means that they're building relationships, and that to me is like the ultimate sign of success,” she said. “That people feel this community attachment to each other. I think it is incredibly beautiful.”
Every second Sunday of the month starting in August, Nassar or Haggerty will be hosting regular Gather And Glow Club meetings at Bookman's on Speedway.
“We'll be there from 3 to 5 p.m. We're kicking it off with Book Bedazzling, and then we'll expand to different themes,” Nassar said.
Later in the month, on August 15, Gather & Glow Club will be collaborating with Artsy Babes Club for Tucson Community Week.
“It's from 3 to 6 p.m. We're going to do a combo craft where Artsy Babes Club is going to be providing the scrap packs for junk journaling, with the theme being ‘women who make,’ and then I'll be doing pin ribbons that people can make,” Nassar said. “We're also having a lot of giveaways from local businesses, most of which are women-owned, which is amazing.”
The event, which will take place at the Tucson Small Business Center, will also have aguas frescas, a coffee bar on-site and a photo booth.
“It's just celebrating women and female empowerment and community,” Nassar said.
