Hello!
Welcome to Space Oddity Gifts, the home of prints, cards and gifts designed especially for Rock 'n' Roll souls.
Who is she?
Let me introduce myself, I'm Amy, a print clashing, music-loving, sweary, tea-drinking Northerner from the East side of Yorkshire. I'm fluent in sarcasm and I also love terrible dad jokes. I have a degree in Fashion Communication and Promotion from Nottingham Trent University. I live with my wonderful boyfriend and our needy, sass-pot of a whippet, Shelby, in our Edwardian terrace home.
How did it all start?
Space Oddity Gifts was born from a desire to do something with my love of designing with bold, bright colours (at the time I was working for a sports team with minimal, monochrome branding) and a want for a certain print that I envisioned for our future home. When I couldn't find what I wanted I decided to just design it myself. I posted it on my personal Instagram back at the end of 2017 and it received a lot of love so I decided to get my arse in gear and set up and Etsy shop for my designs. I was literally baffled when orders started coming in, that people were choosing to put my work up in their homes and that they were tagging my artwork in there posts. I never dreamed it would become something I could do full-time, at first it was just extra pocket money to pay off my credit card and pay for gig tickets but then the orders just kept coming and two years in with some encouragement from my partner I made the decision to take it full time.
What did you do before?
So, I have a degree in Fashion Communication and Promotion, a course that I really skated by on, I think my head and heart just wasn't in it but it was where I discovered my passion for design so I'll always be grateful for that. I self-taught myself photoshop and all the other Adobe packages through video tutorials and blogs and I knew that I wanted some kind of role in design. After leaving uni, I moved back home to limited job opportunities in the creative sector and felt a bit lost with my life. I ended up with a graphic design internship at a local rugby league team. Now, my family is sport-mad, I myself...not so much but I think that's what actually helped me get a full time job there because I was a fresh set of eyes.
After two years creating sports graphics I decided I'd like another challenge and landed a role as in digital marketing for a beauty company. I enjoyed most of the role and loved my co-workers but I just didn't click with the micro-management style of the owners and I found myself really low on confidence, full of self-doubt and anxiety to the point were I was being sick before work. It was not fun times for me and I was desperate to leave so I put everything I had into Space Oddity Gifts and started to actually self-promote, to talk about my side-hustle with people and start to be proud of it. I started posting and promoting my work every day on Instagram, using the right hashtags and engaging with my audience and it paid off. My followers increased, along with my orders and when I saw that I was getting orders in from the United States and Australia, I realised it was becoming bigger that a side hustle and that I needed to invest time into it and not just nights. So I made the decision to go full time, I think some family members saw this as a risk but I believed I could do it and I knew my end goal in life was to be able to support myself and not be relying on the pay-check of a job that was destroying my mental health. I decided to go full time by April 2020 and I was looking forward to telling the boss to go forth, naturally old COVID-19 took that out of my hands and I found myself without a 'proper' job anyway, but life goes on and I'm the happiest I've ever been.
What's your advice for creators and small business owners?
Just believe in yourself. Do what you do and do it well, don't compare yourself to similar creators, just keep going at your pace. Take a leap of faith if it's something you really want to do and invest in products or ways that will help your business grow. Also, don't rip other makers off, don't copy designs, if you have made something similar or inspired by another creator then tag them in it, lift them up too.
What's next for Space Oddity Gifts?
I've just launched a full card range, tote bags and face masks and I'm dying to dip my toe into other product ranges. I'd also love to start seeing my work stocked in shops. I'm just really excited for the future. Watch this space.
Amy x