Suddenly, after almost 3 years, I felt a weight lifted. I hadn’t even realised how horribly anxious and depressed I was until I got out. I burned through my savings trying to stay in my flat, I started a business selling resin pieces and while it was a small success it wouldn’t pay my bills. It only took a few months to lose my motivation and I knew it was because I’d started the business for the wrong reasons, money is a great motivator but it doesn’t last. You need the passion; the fire. I gave up and moved back in with my Mom. I felt like a failure to be moving back there at 22. The reality is, plenty of us have. Some by choice, some because of things beyond our control. It doesn’t make us failures, it makes us realists.

 

I knew I couldn’t keep going alone and I’d told myself I wouldn’t go for another job that didn’t make me happy and ideally had decent management. As you can imagine, this gave me very few choices. I was back home, unemployed, feeling completely useless. What was the natural next step here for a burnt out, once "gifted and talented" child? Start another business.

 

Dreams Designs. This time, it was something I enjoyed. I designed and printed stickers, it gave me some creative freedom and allowed me to keep busy. My custom logo stickers were the most popular. They got a best seller badge, I went from 10 sales to 300 within less than a couple months, but they were just other people’s logos. My own art was taking a back seat again. I tried my own designs, but they just never did as well. I continued with the logo stickers, made £3,000 on Etsy and hit 700 sales but I’d lost that spark for it again. I stopped the custom stickers, focused on my own designs and sales slowed.

 

I took some time for myself, got back into old hobbies like reading and was introduced to the world of Percy Jackson through a friend who, to this day, I give complete credit to for being the reason I achieved so much with that business. It sparked something in me I hadn’t felt before; I wanted to make Greek Mythology merch. There was so little of it out there and I wanted to contribute. I launched a Kickstarter for a Greek Mythology Enamel Pin trio. I designed Medusa, Hades and Zeus pins and raised over £1000 on my first ever Kickstarter campaign. I was over the moon and yet also in total disbelief, all of these people wanted to support me and my art. I packaged up the Kickstarter rewards, got the remaining stock uploaded on Etsy and before long my glow-in-the-dark Medusa had a best seller badge. I sold out pretty quickly but didn’t have the funds to restock so I launched another campaign. This time I’d designed a Phoenix pin, with the option of a feather charm dangling. They raised even more funds and had just as many backers, I even had enough funds left over to restock Medusa but before long she sold out again along with the Phoenix pins. I launched my final campaign, a spinner pin, a pegasus and a dragon. We hit the goal again and many of the backers from previous campaigns had supported me again along with many new ones. At this point, I’d hit 900 sales on Etsy and realised that just the pins had become too much for me. I couldn’t restock any designs consistently without fundraising. It turned out you need different things to keep a store going! I started selling art prints, stickers, suncatchers, etc and suddenly it all made sense. I started attending in person craft markets and getting the opportunity to speak to people about my work and my business was a totally different ballpark. It was the piece I’d been missing from my previous businesses, that passion and someone to share it with.