It's my business...

It's my business...

This is a bit of a departure from my usual mutterings on here, life is hectic at the moment with running my biz in the run up to Christmas, it mainly consists of a lot of "ooh look over here everyone at this stuff I make, it would make a fab gift" and packing orders for people who thankfully agree! I don't want to give the wrong impression here I'm most definitely not swimming in orders...as I imagine you can all appreciate at the mo, it's quiet out there, but thank the heavens for wholesale right now!

Charles-Antoine Coypel, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

I was feeling a bit hesitant about taking this approach with today's post, chatting a bit about my biz and my general day to day, but I figure it's very much in the spirit of my 'You didn't win this award' series. One of the things I really wanted to do here on Substack, is give myself a space where I can speak openly and honestly for myself about anything and everything, to let myself be me. Now as I'm sure you will soon find out, if you haven't already, this will take many forms from my decided joy in all things silly, to my passionate opinions on the grand scheme of things and my love for championing and sharing the work and stories of others. The response to one such post last week, featuring the first of what I hope will be many guest spots in my 'You didn't win this award', series was truly wonderful and it was great to see what Claire Venus wrote, resonate with so many. I started writing about my own so called experiences as a 'loser' because I knew logically that the odds were I would not be alone in my experiences and that this whole idea of losing needs to be turned on its head. While yes other people's opinions can have huge influence on things, especially if they're in positions of power, no matter how fancy their title is, it doesn't change the fact that whatever they say is indeed just their opinion, which is of course subjective. We can and should still be proud of the things we've created that may not have 'won'.

So to give myself a break from the idea of what 'I should' share here, those 'I shoulds' are trying to get to work again, I thought I'd spend the rest of this post introducing you to the work I create for my biz, the video above is of a recent commission I had, both illustrations which are now pins in my shop. So hello again everyone I'm Jess, a textile artist and illustrator who makes bright, bold and fun sustainable statement jewellery inspired by nature, books and coosplaying pigeons....yes, I did indeed just use my business tag line on you, what can I say it does exactly what it says on the tin!

My Birds of a Feather and Classic Literature collections.

As you can see very much repping the nature lovers and fellow bookish types with my work! My two nature themed collections also raise funds for relevant charities with every purchase, the RSPB and Buglife respectively, I figure that seeing as nature has provided the inspiration it’s only fair I help it out in return. Now you may be wondering “hey where’s that coosplay pigeon you keep mentioning???” Here you go the wait is over, this is a brief glimpse of a very festive Fred the pigeon before I do a proper intro post at some point in the near future….

I've run my business for 9 years now, which is quite the landmark and so much has evolved and grown over time, but over the last few years I feel like I've really started to settle into a comfortable place with how and what I want to create. Sensibly, or not,I have never created a distinction between the different styles of my work into separate sub- businesses or brands, they're all me and I think I've spent so much of my life tailoring myself to suit certain situations, that to have to do this with my creative work would be a step too far. I completely understand why people do and I'm glad it works for them, but there really is no distinction between me and my business, as a sole trader I am my brand and I'm happy embracing all the delightful facets of it in one place. I feel like my work blogging has really helped reinforce this for myself, so thanks internet, I'm letting myself embrace the idea of doing what feels right for me to share in the moment, rather than what 'I should' because of perceived wisdom or algorithms. Like a rather wonderful person said “F**k the algorithm”, I mean how can you not love that! Maybe if we all start to shift back to this approach, trusting those powerful gut feelings, giving ourselves permission to let how we feel play a bigger part in how we interact with these online spaces, the algorithms won't know what to do with themselves. If we jump on a trend it will be because it looks fun, if we don't it'll be because it's not our kind of thing and that's fine. Maybe we should take a leaf out of children's books, I mean we all were them once, and remember that sometimes, just maybe our inner child might know a thing or two about what feels right, even when it comes to big 'grown up' business!

 

 

 

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