everything that lead to this

Hello my lovelies,

I feel like my first palm post would have to be one telling you more about me and what my journey has been that has lead me to starting Hand and Palm.

I’ve always been two things, an animal lover and creative. My favourite things to do when I was little was playing in the garden with the chickens and drawing. People would ask me what I wanted to be when I’m older and I would say a disney animator or a cartoonist. I was fascinated by it, I would fast forward my disney tapes to the end where they showed behind the scenes footage of the animators at work. I remember sitting at my tiny drawing desk in my bedroom, practicing how to draw dogs and making my own comics. That bedroom slowly filled with drawings that covered all four walls. As I grew what I drew changed, when I was a teenager I became interested in fashion, and started drawing my own collections of clothes onto differently posed models. New career path, fashion designer…

Studying and Travel

At college I studied textiles, art and media studies. I went to an open day at Central Saint Martins to see if fashion was what I really wanted to study but instantly just felt like it wasn’t quite right for me so I decided not to go to University and start working instead. I took a job at French Connection as a sales assistant and eventually worked my way up to assistant manager, I was there for 4 years and had learnt all about customer service, management and merchandising. A girl I worked with said she was going to travel around Australia for a year and I thought ‘what a cool thing to do!’ So I saved some money, made some plans and ended up spending a year living and working in Sydney. I didn’t quite do the whole travel thing, for me it was more about living and experiencing somewhere new with the possibility of being permanent.

I was working for a magazine distribution company in the customer service department, that was a very interesting experience to say the least! Working for a magazine was now my new career focus, I quickly became obsessed with Frankie Magazine and loved the illustrative style. I was at this point starting to really focus on digital illustration, I had one of those ipods that had the touch screen so you could draw onto it and I would spend my entire hour commute on the bus drawing different designs to then send to my laptop when I got home.

I wanted to expand my digital design skills so I did a bit of research to see what was available in my area. I found an intensive Graphic Design course at the Design Centre Enmore and it sounded perfect. I was taught skills using all Adobe Creative Suite programmes and started to build a portfolio of design work.

My year in Australia came to an end and I decided not to pursue a visa to stay. When I returned home (West Sussex) I knew that I wanted to live by the sea but also in a city environment, Brighton ticked all the boxes so after 3 months of searching I found a flat with a couple of friends and started my Brighton journey!

Brighton

Living in Brighton was fab, so much creativity around! The beach on my doorstep and plenty of stores, bars and coffee shops to keep me busy. To get a wage rolling in I worked for Ted Baker as their in-store visual merchandiser. A sleepy little store but my role gave me an element of creative freedom and I was able to style the shop in fun and interesting ways. However I was struggling to make rent payments so for more pay I went to work for Urban Outfitters as a junior manager, after a few months I realised that I wanted to get away from retail and start my graphic design career. An opportunity came up to do a media course for a local magazine. It was free and sounded like good experience. After a couple of weeks on the course they saw that I had design and layout skills and hired me full time to design the magazine. Even though it was a very small magazine, I had complete creative freedom to practice and explore layout design.

Growing more confident in my skills I started to venture into freelance, first offering to friends and then friends of friends. I signed up to a few design advertising websites to get some new clients and eventually found myself in a position with enough steady work to go freelance full time. One of my favourite freelance jobs was working with a publishers in Sussex, who I still work with now and then, designing inspirational gifting books, sometimes just the covers, sometimes the entire book.

London

After 6 months of full time freelancing, a job for a Graphic Designer at Oliver Bonas came up. I felt that a steady income at a large retail brand would be pretty awesome so I applied, and got it! This is where I entered the world of wall art, I was responsible for creating majority of their wall art as well as being in charge of all graphics and branding. I worked closely with the PR team helping with events and running a variety of workshops and I realised how much I loved them! After commuting from Brighton for 2 years my boyfriend, little dog and I decided to make the move to London. I had made my way up to Senior level and as I was nearing the 5 year mark I started to think about what might be next. Then the pandemic hit and like so many, I was furloughed. I took this as the perfect opportunity to fully explore my style, If I could create anything, without having to sign it off with others, without having to think about a certain customer, what would that look like?

The Start of Hand and Palm

One evening I grabbed my collection of Posca Pens and started to draw. I had filled up a couple of sketch pads when I decided to stop, take pictures of them and upload them to my laptop, playing with the designs further in illustrator. I also experimented with drawing onto tote bags, wall hangings and bottles. I was pretty proud of them and thought why not just put them on instagram to see what happens, but I needed a name… as I had drawn so many hands and palm leaves I decided that this was what I was going to call myself, Hand and Palm. I liked the play on words and as everything was originally hand drawn it just felt right. My wonderful group of friends followed me and started to share my account. It started to reach more and more people and then the WONDERFUL Sarah Powell followed me and sent me a DM ‘Are you selling this Banner?’ It was a wall hanging that said ‘Stay Home’ with two hands. I hadn’t thought about selling at this point but this pushed me to go for it. I replied yes and within that week I had photographed my art, designed a website and set it live. Sarah received her wall hanging with some other lovely gifts to say thank you for being my first customer. The gorgeous person that she is she shared this with her following and then before I knew it I was at over 1k followers. The word of Hand and Palm spread across instagram, from friends, influencers and customers. I couldn’t believe the numbers. Followers were going up and sales were coming in. At this point I decided that I was going to make this my full time job, I was going to make this work and give it my all, so I left Oliver Bonas.

So here I was, starting my own business, I had no studio, just the rug in my front room where I would hand draw every piece of art. I sat and drew for hours and then I sat and packed for hours and then by this point it was 8am so I walked to the post office to send orders out. When I received 28 orders for the Power of the Flower design (thank you Liv Purvis for making this one popular!) I knew that I needed to tweak my business model! I ordered an Epson Eco-Tank Printer and decided that I would move from fully hand drawn to printed, with the option of a fully hand drawn piece available. I was worried that people would be put off by this change but I was wrong, sales continued and I finally started to get a routine in place where I was able to sleep again!

Fast forward to today and I am now living in Cornwall, selling my art and other lovely things from my website and little Hand and Palm shop. I still can’t quite believe this is my life but as one of my prints says, ‘Maybe it’s not luck, maybe you just worked your butt off’. And I did work my butt off, not just with getting Hand and Palm going but at everything that came before. If it wasn’t for all my previous experiences I wouldn’t have the skills or confidence to create Hand and Palm. It all feels like it was leading to this and even though I do feel lucky, I feel bloody proud!

Everyone’s journey is different but don’t discount any of your experiences, you never know how they play out into the bigger picture!

Stay Lovely