Today we’d like to introduce you to Shelby Kranker.
Hi Shelby, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I never planned to start a creative business – I went to school for my bachelor’s in nursing and worked as a registered nurse. I had always loved making art and trying creative activities, and during the COVID pandemic I found myself spending more and more time painting with watercolors on my days off as a way to cope with the burnout I was feeling from working in the hospital. I had lost all the passion and excitement I had ever felt about my nursing career, and I started to think that maybe there was something creative I could do instead. My husband gave me the push I needed to finally start a business with my artwork.
I took an online course on how to turn my paintings into files I could use to create various types of prints, and I learned how to use photoshop with a lot of help from my creative husband. In the spring of 2022, I opened an Etsy shop with eight greeting cards using my designs. A few months later, I started selling art prints, and I very gradually added inventory to my shop. Growth and sales were slow initially, but I kept painting and adding new designs to my shop. I also set up my own website.
About a year after I opened my shop, I found the thing that really made me excited about my business, and the thing that brought a lot more customers to my shop. I started to offer personalized stationery sets featuring patterns and designs I created from my watercolor paintings. This opened the door for me to start offering other personalized items, like notepads, invitations, and gift tags. Adding the ability to personalize my products gave my customers the unique and special options they were looking for, and my business finally started to take off.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
The biggest hurdle for me was getting started. There was a lot of learning I had to do in regards to both business and turning my art into products. I did a lot of learning and figuring out the logistics of running a business as I went along. I’ve been fortunate in that I’ve seen slow and steady growth since I started my business. There have certainly been times when I’ve gotten frustrated because things weren’t growing as quickly as I would have liked, but I’ve found that showing up consistently and continuing to make new things and try new products has enabled me to keep making progress.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
All of my products start with my original watercolor paintings. Every painting is done by hand with paint on paper before it gets turned into a digital file that I can use on prints and stationery.
While I love doing paintings for fine art prints, stationery is really my favorite thing to create. I love tiny details and making tiny paintings, and those lend themselves perfectly to creating patterns, borders, and embellishments on stationery sets. My stationery designs typically have a border or small decorative elements on the front and a coordinating pattern on the back. The watercolor details and vibrant colors add whimsy and personality that more simple, traditional designs don’t have.
Are there any apps, books, podcasts, blogs or other resources you think our readers should check out?
I love reading classic novels. Jane Austen, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Daphne du Maurier are some of my favorites. The beautiful language and imagery in great novels is one of the things that inspires me to make art!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://whitecloverpaperco.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/whitecloverpaperco/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/whitecloverpaperco/
- Other: https://whitecloverpaperco.etsy.com
