How I got to where I am today

I’ve always been a creative person. One of my earliest memories is drawing with a hot pink marker, and hearing my dad say ‘she’s actually pretty good!’. I was lucky to have parents who encouraged my creativity and I took a lot of art classes when I was younger. I went to college for graphic design, and graduated in the midst of an economic depression. I had a lot of big ideas about what my career should look like and basically no practical knowledge about how to get to that point. It was a tough time! My internship was ending soon, and I was applying for any job on the market: Segway tour guide, barista, Victoria’s Secret sales associate, law office assistant (looking back, that interview was wild as I was so clearly not a good match.. Showing up with my extra designed resume and not being able to hide I had no interest in law! I still feel bad about wasting their time haha). I went on so many interviews, and received no offers. It was a tough pill to swallow since I had just graduated from college, and I had the expectation that having a degree would make getting a job easier, but that was not the case. Looking back, I think it was a combination of bad luck and just not being prepared for job hunting, but at the time it was a huge blow to my confidence.

I was really resistant to starting a business. It just felt so official and boring, and not like something a coOL cReaTivE like me would do. I didn’t want to start a business, but I did need to pay the bills, so I eventually backed into starting my business by freelancing, taking on clients who needed help with their websites and branding. That evolved into wedding stationery, which is where I rediscovered my love of art, particularly watercolor painting. My art became a huge selling point for my stationery, and soon almost every project had me painting custom flowers, custom maps, pet portraits, venue portraits… you name it, I did it. But as my wedding stationery business grew, it felt more and more out of sync with how I envisioned my business, and my life.

It was a really stressful job! I felt so responsible for everything, and that included taking on the emotional well being of my clients - I lived in fear of making a mistake that would ruin their experience, and I took it so personally if someone was stressed and took it out on me. I had a hard time seeing how I could create such a personalized experience for my clients and also scale my business so I wasn’t the only one doing everything. The tipping point came after my last year in business as a wedding stationer. It was a dream year. Every single one of my clients were so kind and excited to work with me, every single project went about as smoothly as you could hope, every hiccup was quickly and easily fixed with no hard feelings, and I was proud of every invitation I created. And behind the scenes I was still a mess - waking up in the night with my heart racing, wondering what I had missed. I dreaded checking my email because I knew that could be the moment I got the terrible news that I had ruined someone’s wedding and probably their life.

It felt like a natural time to try something new. I told myself that I would take a year and explore other options, because if I missed wedding stationery, I could always come back to it. I decided to try focusing on my art, and designing some products for an online shop. This took a lot of what I loved about stationery design with me, and it left a lot of the parts I didn’t love behind, so it felt like a natural step. In January 2020, I started working toward building an art collection, and updating my website, and I haven’t looked back.

2020 was a wild year to pivot - on the one hand, I’m grateful I was able to do so before Covid because it would have been crazy to try to manage clients and printing schedules when almost all of my printers permanently closed, and everyone was rescheduling for TBD.. but it was a little hard to gain momentum and interest when my first art collection was set to launch in late March. There were just a few things going on then!

Even though I could not have predicted the way this year would go, I’m so glad I made this change. I learned so much last year about the direction I’d like to take my business, and the direction I’d like to take my art practice, and I felt like the holiday season was such a nice culmination of all of my hard work, and affirmation that I am moving in the right direction. I ended the year feeling so excited and inspired to see where I go next, and grateful for everyone who supported me in such a crazy year. Since everything was so unprecedented, it almost felt like I had a whole year to just experiment and see where I wanted to go, and now this is the ‘real’ start of my business.

And that’s where I am today! Thanks for reading along!