In my second to last post of this series leading up to the launch of my new Desert Trails collection, I wanted to dive in a bit to the last three years of my journey. This is the part that I like to share as a reminder to anyone who is feeling discouraged with the time it is taking to achieve a dream or goal they may have. It’s not always a straightforward path...it can be more of a “cha-cha” as I like to call it. As long as you keep taking those steps forward, you’re still making progress and that time dancing in the mud is not wasted. You’re most likely learning valuable lessons and a ton about yourself along the way.
So to make a long story much shorter, in the summer of 2018, I quit my full time job that I had been working for the last 18 months and started working part time for Craft Boner, Reverie Living and soon enough, Moore Collection, all friends of mine. I did this so that I could focus more time on growing Paper Girl Creative, the wedding invitation brand that I recently created. Craftbelly switched to being more of my passion project and honestly, that’s where a lot of magic happened! By letting Craftbelly just be an extension of my creative self and putting no pressure on it to pay my bills, I was able to play around and experiment so much! I discovered new ways of creating patterns (hello watercolor and sketching!), new materials (hello fabric!), did fun collaborations with friends, licensed patterns to companies like Deny Designs, & really just let myself explore.
By the beginning of 2020, I was only working for Moore and gearing up for my best year yet for my wedding invites biz, and then Covid happened and everything stopped. So I turned to my ride or die bitch, Craftbelly and started selling through what product I had just to make some money. Then I was inspired to start creating new patterns & it just gave me life during a strange & hard time. It reminded me how much joy designing patterns, playing w/ color & creating products brought me.
This brings us to the fall of 2020, where a friendship morphed into a mentorship and I finally found the clarity to move forward on my dreams. ✨Stay tuned for the rest!
