How I Began
How I Began
paigesillustrations was launched on the 11th June 2020 as a little Etsy shop. At the time we were two and a half months into our first UK national lockdown, and I had just completed my studies at university. I studied Illustration at Norwich University of the Arts, and I was feeling very apprehensive about graduating, especially into the pandemic.
Final hand in was in May, so after this I spent most of my time painting and coming up with new concepts and designs for fun, while patiently waiting for lockdown to be over. During this time I realised I needed to find a way of continuing a career within the industry I love, as I predicted creative jobs would be slim to none after the lockdown restrictions were lifted.
I had a few hundred followers on Instagram at the time, and I had just started growing on TikTok too. I realised I had a decent marketing ability, and from this realisation I decided I wanted to open an Etsy shop. Luckily I had some suitable artwork from my final project at uni, and I had been designing new artworks since hand in.
Here are my two personal favourites...
(The bengal tiger design was from my final project at university, and the other is one of the first paintings I made post grad - and I have the original piece framed in my new studio now!)
So I used the remainder of my student finance (along with some money my grandparents had kindly gifted me for graduating) to invest in my first A3 printer, some card stock and a small amount of packaging supplies. After three weeks of research and prep, I finally launched my shop!
After one week of patiently waiting I received my first order, and I can't even begin to explain how excited I was (thank you so much Chloe)! Within my first month I had shipped orders to multiple places within the UK and even to Australia and America! I was blown away by all the support, and I'm still so thankful to the people who made my first month on Etsy so memorable.
So that is the story of how paigesillustrations came to be! Since then we have introduced over 100 new products, reached 100k followers on TikTok, stocked our products in stores, moved into our new home with a huge studio space, partnered with noissueco on exciting brand deals, and had the pleasure to be featured in the 2021 Spring Issue of Origin Magazine! If I told myself back then that all this would happen there's absolutely no way I would believe it!
Here is a photo of me with our first wholesale order! This order contained notebooks, prints and stickers - all going to Peak Wildlife Park in Staffordshire, UK.
Thank you so much for reading the story of how my little business started, I hope you enjoyed it!
Paige!