It all started when I was an itty bitty babe, barely old enough to talk; my mother always told me ever since I held a crayon I never stopped drawing. I have loved art and creating things since I can remember, always looked forward to going to art class in school, teachers were always putting my art in competitions and I would win ribbons! To this day, I have kept the artwork that won ribbons and I have a huge pile of art I have done since I was in elementary school up until now! ‍

Through-out hight school I never knew what I really wanted to do in life but I figured it would be something in the art field. I wanted to be a fashion designer when I was young but quickly grew out of that phase… boy were those designs something else, yikes! I did end up going to college for a Business Entrepreneur Certificate and learned how to start business and how to make it successful. After graduating, I had no idea what to do with the Certificate I had just earned, so I meandered through life not going in any real direction until one day I discovered Adobe Photoshop! ‍

Boy, were those the days of bad photoshopped selfies and horrible drawings lol! I did a lot of self taught YouTube tutorial art and it didn’t turn out terrible but was not used correctly at all! I enjoyed digital drawing so much more than physical drawing and any physical art so I looked into what I could do for a career path with that and found that I could become a graphic designer. I quickly looked around for collages that taught graphic design and found one. I enrolled right away and began classes the following semester. I graduated with honors with a degree in Interactive Media and Graphic design; I just knew this degree would get me somewhere in life but didn’t realize how long it would take. ‍

After I graduated I struggled to get a job in the graphic design field as it seemed everyone and anyone was doing the same thing. This brought me down quite a bit and I fell into a funk at a dead end job that I could never go anywhere with. While working this dead end job I found out that I had stage 1B1 Vilo-glandular Adenocarcinoma cervical cancer and ended up needing two surgeries for and was out of work on bed rest for 3 months so my boyfriend at the times mother gave me some money to buy my own iMac computer so I could have a good computer to do my designing on and boy let me tell you, I have never gone back to PC again…. Lol!

A few years later and no loner with that boyfriend. I spent many of days and nights creating on that iMac and never got sick of designing and thought to myself, I should start my own business somehow doing designing so what I did was just that. I started out designing stationary such as wedding invitations, bridal shower invitations, birthday invitations, thank you cards, and so on. To be honest, I did sell a decent amount but the market just wasn’t there for these things because everyone was doing it, so I needed to figure out what my niche was. ‍

I ended up meeting a guy online and we started dating and it was pretty much love at first sight and we hit it off so much so we spent literally every day together since we met. He pushed me to look for a job in my field because he thought I deserved it and that my art was worth it. So, I started to look for better work and eventually found one as a graphic designer at a print company. Let me tell you, I LOVED this job, but then guess what, Covid hit and they had to lay off almost half the company so back to another dead end job I went… ugh! At least I still had this amazing boyfriend who was actually now my fiancé to help keep my head up and not give up. We ended up getting married during covid when everything was locked down so we had a very small immediate family wedding at a teeny tiny church our friends owned. ‍

I played with my style for a while and thought, hey I would love to put my designs into stickers to sell. So I looked up how to do this and one Christmas my husband got me a sticker machine and I bought myself the supplies and a printer. I played around a lot and with a lot of trial and error a found a good rhythm and the right mix of supplies to make decent stickers. While getting my store on Etsy together and finally finding my color pallet, I kept applying for other jobs as well because I needed a full time job as my business does not make enough to live off of yet. I landed a job I absolutely love working for, and I’m on their marketing team and I’m constantly feeling appreciated there and I get to work from home! That is how I ended up where I am today! ‍

Thank you for taking the time to read my story!