Abby’s Creative Escape was born out of many many rebrands…. I first started doing print on demand under the name Purelifephotoss back in 2016…. only 6 years later did I finally come up with a brand that I am 100% happy with.
The backstory
Everyone has some backstory of how they discovered themselves…. I haven’t completely figured myself out yet, I did know I wanted to be a creative. I had everyone telling me “Art is unnecessary”, “Art isn’t a job”, Do something productive”.
This is my story. The story of why I picked art, or why the art business picked me……
Well, I always enjoyed art, I was always more of a writer. I didn’t really find my love of art until tenth grade. It all stated it high school when it was time to pick out electives, I picked two, Photoshop and Illustrator. I fell in love with digital art. My earlier projects weren’t great. Here is one of them.
After falling in love with the digital art world and Photoshop, I took another class the following year. Rather than doing the client work and projects that I was given, I preferred to do my own thing, yes I would get the projects done. (those were for a grade and part of the class)
This was one of my favorite projects of the class. The project was to pick a song and make a illustration from the song. I originally picked This is Who I Am by: Colton Dixon. After doing the sketches, roughs and exercises for the song, I asked the teacher if I could use one of my poems. He said I could. You could say this is where I started doing my own thing. I still did the sketches, roughs and comps……
After doing the projects, we would often get time do our own projects. One of my favorites, the start of my Blackbird series.
The teacher told me one day that I can’t just use Photoshop for a career….. Side note, I do know how to use the other programs for graphic design and have designed work for clients…..
When college came around, it was like taking a step back, I had to go back to using pencil and paper. The whole reason why I fell in the love with digital art in the first place is that it actually looks like something. I can’t draw….. most of my paintings and drawings had a childlike feel ….. One of my sketchbooks, later turned into a digital work.
I took the required classes for the first year.
Around half way through my second year of college, I created my brand Purelifephotoss. I came up with a logo and tagline for my art. Unique Artwork. Unique Name. Purelifephotoss with two s’s At first, I was worried about putting my work out there to the public, I started out with a Instagram account. Seeing all the likes and comments on my artwork gave me confidence. The next step was building my website.
I started doing research on how I could make money with my photos and digital art, I came across this Print on Demand site called Redbubble. After creating more work, I started uploading it to the site. After the first month of nothing. I had about 20 – 25 works uploaded and I got a email from them saying
First I started Purelifephotoss to prove a point to my teacher’s that I could make money using photoshop.
To my suprise I sold my first thing ever, a postcard… I think I made like .50 cents but it was something.
Once I made my first $100 on Redbubble, I started focusing on other print on demand sites like Society6 and Teepublic….
After finding success with that I switched my name and logo to match myself and identity. I was becoming more confident in showing my face on the ‘gram’. This was the start of AbbyCreates in 2017 or 2018. I dont remeber.
I chose to do this to get a troll off my back changing my name and logo. They claimed my current name was to close to PureLife the water brand and thier were a few photography brands called PureLifePhotography….
Truth be known, i dont rember too much from that time because I was so sick and didnt know it.
In 2020 my mental health crashed and my furry buddy died breaking my heart to piecees. This sent me into the hospital for a two week stay in a mental ward to get my meds adjusted. During that time all my hard work in shops and socials were gone over night.
I think they were reported and shut down after I had a poltical Trump design go viral on Teepublic. I couldnt do anything about it either because I was in the hospital.
So this means I had to literally start from scratch.
I missed being creative so I created Abbys Anxiety Bracelets.
This one is my first one
I made my word bracelets different by adding messages of hope and lava beads so you can add your favorite essential oils.
You can personalzie your own on my current website!
After some time and more logo changes after trying to combine everything in one
I ended up createing a bunch of new work morphing into for Abby’s Pet Boutique, Cheerful Comforts and even for Abbys Creative Escape, where I could upload both new and old work to my site.
I settled on Abbys Pet Boutique, inspried by my own pets and Cheerful Comforts inspired by my own mental health struggles.
These are just part of my brand,
I finally settled on Abbys Creative Escape where you can find my handmade items, my digital items, my design services, my merch and my photography
All in all, it took 6 years and I still have some of my older work in my current shop like favorites and best sellers.
I am hopefully sharing the full story of my brand to motivate and insprire YOU to keep going!
Thank you for reading.
-Abby
