From The Beginning…
Welcome To The Artist Journal!
It felt fitting to start my artist journal off from the beginning of my creative journey and to share a little of how Nicola Wilson Creative Co came to be.
The beginning of my journey started with a collection of Annie Sloan paints and antique furniture from charity shop finds and eBay searches, spending my time upcycling and painting pieces for customer’s homes. This was back in 2018, when I was using Facebook (one of the few social media platforms I no longer use). I created a small page to share my work and everything grew from there and the creative world started to show itself more to me. I spent the next couple of years experimenting with all kinds of creative hobbies that I found - from paper-cutting to polymer clay charms for bow makers. I wish I still had some photographs to share with you all! It was during this time that I had become fully immersed in the world of creativity and by 2020, I was exploring Instagram and the incredible artists sharing their work.
One in particular, Bonnie Christine, appeared in my feed one day and I was shown Surface Design. For me, this was the true beginning of my creative journey. After spending time loosely exploring the previous crafts I mentioned of painted furniture and paper-cutting, there was just something about Surface Design that pulled me in completely and I just wanted to learn everything I could. In 2020 I took the Immersion Course by Bonnie Christine and learned about creative business and surface pattern design, as well as how to use Adobe Illustrator. I was completely obsessed and loved building a small business (back then called Nicola Jane Studio) and I created artwork for jewellery brands and candle makers for their labels. I was enjoying every minute.
This next part, I will keep brief as it is the part of my creative journey that is my lowest point - I gave up my creative illustration business because of severe anxiety during working for a pharmacy in Covid. I was overwhelmed, extremely unhappy (very much inching into depression) and struggling with the day to day of what working in that environment during Covid was like. It was a huge shame to close the business down and I do often wonder where I might have been if I had stuck with it, but my mindset was most certainly not there at the time.
Then a Fresh Start,,,
A new day job helped bring back my confidence slowly, reduced my anxiety and had me wanting to slowly start creating again and on the 1st September 2024 my new Instagram page went live with my first post, sharing the start of my branding process…
I started to share daily posts of my progress, my artwork, my photographs and my travels. I talked about starting again and building a creative community over the course of a year. I created just to create and never once aimed to sell my art. I just wanted to enjoy the process of creating, finding my style and growing my skills. My following has organically grown in time and although it is not all about the numbers, I love how it has grown over the last year and a half with so many wonderful people and incredible kindness shown to a returning artist like myself.
After the one year mark, I was encouraged to have some products created again with my illustrations on and I found myself researching UK based and local manufacturers to create my products and the excitement grew and the motivation grew to turn this into a creative business. Now that my mindset was positive and I felt more settled in the way I had taken things so slowly and in my own time, I felt ready to start moving forward. This lead to me taking the plunge and creating this website and starting a small shop, alongside a wholesale catalogue! Such a change from where things were starting to go and I am so pleased to have come back, learnt from my mistakes and early experiences in 2020 to bring Nicola Wilson Creative Co into the world!
I hope you will enjoy following along as my journey continues and this wonderful community continues to grow!
What has come from my journey this year?
A new found love for photography, especially of wildflowers and wildlife.
A creative style that I love and is actually becoming recognised by people which is amazing!
A product range that I am proud to share, made sustainably and right here in the UK.
