EVERYTHING HAS A BEGINNING
8(ish) year old me in front of the ocean (don’t panic, it might have been the 90’s but there was still plenty of land between me and the actual cliff edge…)!
When I’m processing orders I can’t help but think of 8 year old me and the bootleg sticker business I started at school - that inevitably got shut down but planted the seed of a lifetime…
You see I had heard about the plight of the whales and that IFAW (the International Fund for Animal Welfare) were in desperate need of donations, so being the ocean-obsessed little girl I was, and still am, I decided to raise some money so they could get some help!
Realising there was a market for the (extremely copyright-infringed) Disney characters I was drawing at the time, I recreated them on sticky-backed craft paper - selling them at a mighty 2p a piece, and 20p for the really BIG ones. Within a couple of days I had racked up quite a few pounds and all the kids were showing off their custom sticker designs, up until someone reported me to a teacher and they quickly put a stop to it all. It all caused quite the stir!
After a meeting about the ‘incident’ I took what money I had made and exchanged it for a post-safe cheque from my mum (a whopping £20!) including some of my own pocket money and certainly some extra from mum. Feeding that envelope into the red post box at the end of my street I felt like a superhero.
Part of me looks back and wonders how much difference £20 could possibly have made in the grand scheme of things, but of course it made a difference - every cause we fund or fight for does something even if it’s just from the collective will of wanting things to be better.
It’s for 8 year old me, and for all the nature loving 8 year olds to come, that I pledged to donate at least 10% of every sale I make to environmental charities and why my art is inspired FOR nature and not just by it… I thank you in turn for your support! Stay INSPIRED…